Pants hangers are great when they work, but are very aggravating when they can't maintain a firm grip: Pant legs slip through and the pants fall to the floor, especially when sliding the hangers along the clothes bar. This can happen with thin or slippery fabrics, or when the hangers have been around a while and lost some of their clamping strength. Or maybe they weren't much good to start with. If you use pants hangers, this simple fix might just marginally improve the quality of your life.

Step 1: Materials Needed

Only three things are needed:

1. The recalcitrant hanger

2. Adhesive backed felt pads, available at hardware and discount retailers, among others. These are generally marketed for use in preventing furniture from marring the floor.

3. A pair of scissors, or a razor knife

For the felt pads, I used small sheets from which I cut the necessary pieces to size, but they can also be found in slightly more expensive pre-cut strips, which fit very nicely.

Step 2: How It Works

The concept is simple: Use the felt to pad the inside of one of the two slats between which the pant legs are gripped. This A) increases the gripping power applied by the clamp built into the hanger's hook by means of principles of physics I intuitively understand, but am at a loss to explain, and B) provides a less slippery gripping surface.

Step 3: Create Felt Strips

Cut strips from felt that are somewhat narrower than the slats of the hanger. If they are wider, part of the adhesive backing will be exposed and will attract dirt.

Step 4: Trim to Fit

Note that the center of the slats are scalloped to accommodate pants that are hung with the seams aligned. Placing the seams in this scalloped section prevents gripping force from being concentrated on the higher profile of the seams, which would reduce grip on the rest of the fabric.

The compressibility of the felt would mitigate sloppiness at this step, but since we are doing this ourselves, we have the opportunity to do it properly.

Trim your felt strips so that you have two pieces which will fit on either side of the scalloped section.

Step 5: Apply Felt Strips to Hanger Slats

The strips have been applied to one of the slats, leaving a gap for seams in the pant legs where the scalloped sections of the slats meet, and the hanger is ready.