Fix your velcro sandals to handle wide feet

I have feet which are wider than average, and like most wide-foot sufferers, I have learned to live with it.  When buying footwear, I get it a size or two larger than normal, and just ignore the huge gap between the tips of my toes and the tips of the shoes.  With sandals, however, having a huge gap like this should not be necessary, since the velcro straps will allow you to adjust the sandal to fit any size foot, right?

Unfortunately not.  The velcro straps on these sandals are typically set for an average foot, and the stingy shoe companies don't give you enough velcro on the straps to deal with a wide foot (and this example is a nice pair of Tevas, supposedly made for wide widths!).  This means that, for a wide foot, there are hardly enough velcro hooks on the sandal strap to stick to the velcro loops, which means that the sandal straps can become undone at the slightest provocation, and any kind of fun activity is always interrupted as you stop to "tie your shoes."

I have found an easy way to increase the velcro strap length on your sandals, though - no sewing, gluing, or anything else required. 

Step 1 You will need -

Home Depot (and probably Amazon.com and others) carry a product called Velcro Brand One-Wrap.  Velcro usually comes in a kit with two strips, one with hooks and one with loops.  However, One-Wrap comes as a single strip, with hooks on one side and loops on the other, so that you can wrap this strip around things and the strip will stick to itself.

Because it combines both hooks and loops in one product, you can attach the loops on the One-Wrap to the velcro hooks on one of the sandal straps, and then attach the One-Wrap hooks to the velcro loops on the other side of the sandal strap, effectively extending the length of the velcro strap but still keeping its strength.

Unfortunately, they sell One-Wrap in 12-foot lengths, and you will need less than a foot of it to fix your sandals.  The roll is usually less than $10 US, but you can use the remainder for all sorts of interesting things (I use it on my backpack straps to hold the straps closer together across my chest).  So, fixing the sandals with One-Wrap is not exactly cheap-and-cheerful, especially if the sandals cost less than $20 US to start with, but not exactly a fortune either.

You will also need a good pair of scissors to cut the One-Wrap.

Comments

[pherlopolus]

Thats a fantastic idea - Thanks :)