The Zipper Hack We Wish We’d Known About Sooner originally appeared on Parade.
Have you ever found those perfect shorts or the just-right pair of jeans? Maybe you wear them as often as laundry day will allow, and you pair them with your favorite tops too. You and those bottoms are inseparable! Except… when the zippers start to fall on their own. How embarrassing, to look down and look like you never zipped your pants after using the bathroom! Even if you don’t care about that, it is really inconvenient to constantly have to pull your zipper up. Which is where this amazing zipper hack comes in handy.
Finding the perfect-fitting pants or shorts can feel like a miracle. So when you do find something that makes you feel and look good, you never want to let it go. And something like a loose zipper can put such a damper on your favorite bottoms.
Sure, we could go buy another pair of jeans, or we can search for another pair of favorite shorts. But that’s a waste of money and time if all that’s wrong with our clothing item is a faulty zipper. This loose zipper hack will fix this problem for you, and you don’t even have to know how to sew. You just need some common household items to get your zipper back in working order in no time.
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The Zipper Hack You Need To Try ASAP if It’s Loose
As with a lot of life’s answers, someone gave this hack on a Reddit thread. Specifically, a post on the r/femalefashionadvice subreddit asked, “What are your ‘secret‘ clothing hacks?” While the top clothing trick was about how to make tucked-in shirts less bulky (tuck them into your underwear or tights, ladies!), the second-best comment caught our eye.
“If the zip on my trousers is always falling down, I thread a key ring through the hole in the pull, then hook that onto the top button before I button the trousers shut,” one Reddit user wrote. “Much easier to place and to undo than a safety pin.”
Everyone probably has an extra keyring around their house; we buy and receive so many keychains, pepper sprays or attachable accessories that there’s a high possibility there is a free keyring around for you to use. This hack is similar to another tip that people have used for loose zippers, which includes using an elastic for your zipper. But as someone wrote in response to this Reddit comment, a keyring is a perfect alternative to the little hair elastics they’ve been using for this, since they always snap and break.
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For a better visual as to how this hack works, let’s look at TikTok user @liv.ishak’s video. The on-screen words say, “How to keep zippers up,” and she shows how to thread a keyring onto your zipper. Once finished, you pull it up and hook that ring around your pant button. Lastly, button your pants closed on top of the keyring and voila! You have a zipper that stays up with some added reinforcement.
TikTok user @mamma_y also posted about this hack back in 2023, and she shows how to use both an elastic and a keyring to do this trick. In case you don’t have any keyrings or D-rings around your house, an elastic or some other type of circular item you can thread around your zipper and your pant button would work.
Now you can go off and enjoy those amazing pair of jeans or shorts without worrying about your zipper sliding down.
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The Zipper Hack We Wish We’d Known About Sooner first appeared on Parade on Jul 24, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 24, 2025, where it first appeared.
