Here’s a quick addition to tying shoes that will speed up the process and reduce tripping hazard for children. Actually, this trick served me well in military college where getting my boots on quickly and keeping them secured was absolutely mandatory. I still use this method and have our kids’ shoes set this way.

Setup & How-To

As with all good life hacks, this one is simple.

1. Prefer round laces over flat but don’t go out and buy new laces.
2. Ensure the laces are threaded up the shoe from toe towards ankle in the standard criss-cross pattern.
3. Tie a single overhand knot at the end of each lace before the end cap.
4. When tying, tighten the bow knot and draw up the lace ends until the two overhand knots stop progression leaving only two large loops.
5. Cross the two loops into an overhand knot of their own creating the standard double-knotted shoe.
6. Fold the remaining large loops backward and tuck them into the shoe alongside the foot.

The effect here is that there are no exposed, dangling laces but simply a knot system at the top of the lace-run. There should be nothing to catch or come loosened.

Speed

There are two speed advantages.
With the overhand knots preventing the laces from backing out of the first eyelets, the shoe can be opened to its widest ready for easy insertion and exfiltration of the foot.
The knotted lace ends provide a stopper against the knot of the bow reducing the need to “even out” the bow proportions i.e. the bow ties faster.

Reduced Tripping Hazard

With active kids, we want to ensure they aren’t tripping on sometimes-less-than-optimally-self-tied shoelaces. Adding the keeper knots to the ends of the laces gives them:

1. Less to step on by removing a portion of the standard bow
2. More to work with as they double-knot

This is likely an overly-long post describing a pretty simple change, but the time saved in tying, retying, and clean up abrasions from tripping is probably worth it. :-)

~dnwk~