How to fix a broken zipper in 5 minutes

Kids, winter coats, and broken zippers? What gives?! You can fix it (almost) in less than 5 minutes with a small zip tie.

We've had a few winter coats get smashed zippers at daycare - a streak of bad luck maybe. Argh! It happened again and of course you discover it Sunday night before school (we call it school for all the kids) the next day. Naturally...

Without the little plastic stopper at the bottom the zipper is pretty much useless and pretty tricky to zip up.

Even if you do get it zipped up it will pull apart at the bottom and jam. That's no good.

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So down to the basement workbench with the now nearly-useless coat...with no plan.

How could I hold the bottom securely without any sharp parts?

You'd see see me standing motionless for a minute staring at the mess on the bench.

I thought of sewing it. No no - I was too lazy to even entertain that idea.

Plus who knows where the sewing stuff is?

Then in the chaos I noticed one of those tiny zip ties -- that might just work and much faster!

I figured it would hold the zipper together at the bottom and as a bonus it would act as a zipper "stopper" too.

Make two small holes beside the plastic zipper and then you can insert a small zip tie.

Pull it through so the end you will cut is under the flap of the coat.

Snip the extra bit off. You can file the plastic a bit to make it smooth. Zip ties can be sharp where they get cut off.

That's it. Fixed - well sort of. Obviously we can't undo the coat now, but hey when you're 3 it's fun to climb into your winter coat and then zip it up.

Plus the childcare folks can't say that his coat won't zip up tomorrow. ;-)

Who knows maybe there is a better way? Do you know any?

Replacing the whole zipper could be done, but he will out grow the coat before we think about getting around to that. Plus we're hoping to be done with winter coats in 5-6 weeks!

We'll see if that little zip tie idea holds up tomorrow...