Photo: Beth Skwarecki
The simple drawstring makes so many things possible – namely, tying up the hood of your sweatshirt or preventing your swimming trunks from falling off when you get out of the pool. But if this string is pulled out, it can be very painful to pull it back in. Unless you have a charging cable handy.
An iPhone cable – or really any cable with a small plug and a relatively stiff cord – can perfectly pull this drawstring back. Of course, you can also use the more traditional method, which involves sticking a large safety pin through the end of the cord and using it to feed the cord back through its channel. But these days, most of us have a charging cable on hand rather than a safety pin.
How to do it:
- Insert the small end of the cord into one of the cord holes.
- Push the cable through until it protrudes from the other end.
- Tie the string to the cord.
- Gently pull the cable back through the channel.
It takes seconds to pull the cable through the duct; The only tricky piece is getting the knotted string into the channel when you start with step 4. Drawstring channels usually provide plenty of room for the cord and the knotted drawstring, but sometimes the opening of the channel can be a little tight. You can enlarge it a bit if needed by cutting or stretching the opening an additional fraction of an inch.
Photo: Beth Skwarecki
After seeing this tip on video, I tried the hoodie I was wearing. I would like to say two things about this video: Firstly, the video is accelerated, so it takes longer than the 45 seconds mentioned in the title. And second, the person doing it tries to brute force step 4 by pulling firmly on the cable instead of taking a second to pull the cable back into the hole. You can do better than that.
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My test worked perfectly, and even with that little fiddling, I got my drawstring back in place in less than two minutes. I have safety pins, but this process took less time than I would have spent digging into my sewing supplies to find one.
