Going Around the Horn

Actually, it's more like "substituting for the horn." Shoehorn, that is. Craig Brewer here.  Didn't mean to get your hopes up if you happen to be a nautical type.  I don't know about you, but I'm always losing my shoehorn, and when I haven't lost it, it's invariably in another room when I'm trying to put on my shoes.

Here's a little trick I figured out this morning.  I usually wear a fairly wide belt, perhaps one and quarter to one and a half inches wide.  I typically need just a little assist getting into my shoes (thus, the shoehorn), but as I was getting dressed I realized my shoehorn was in another part of the house.  I hadn't put on my belt yet, so I dropped the tip of the belt into my shoe — a slip-on shoe — and used it the way you would normally use a shoehorn.  It worked like a charm!

I tried this again later with my tennis shoes, but when the shoe has a tongue that hangs down, it complicates things. On the high side, though, you can do this without sitting or stooping.  If you have just tucked in a dress shirt, bending over to insert a shoehorn can pull your shirt tail out a bit, and you could end up having to tuck that sucker in all over again.

No, I'll never give up my shoehorns (if I can find where I've hidden them), but this trick works in a pinch.