Slow Joe Likes to Eat: Custom face mask leashes

I have four kiddos—three will be attending public grade school this year, which means they will need face masks. This whole pandemic has changed everything.

I have four kiddos—and that means we are constantly losing and searching for all the things. All. The. Things. The shoes, the socks, the library books, the favorite blanket, a teddy bear, that one thing they had 35 seconds ago. All. The. Things.

So, to mitigate the number of times the masks were among all the lost things, I wanted a way to attach their mask to their person so that if it fell off (or was taken off) it would not be: in the mud, in the toilet, on the floor, or forgotten somewhere never to be seen again. Hopefully this will enhance my children's mask-wearing compliance, and keep their teachers from searching for all the masks. (Can you even imagine a kindergarten classroom search for all the lost masks? I mean All. The. Masks.) I searched amazon and found some cute things, but they were either expensive or they would take too long to get here. School starts in exactly 14 days, folks!

Also, I searched pinterest. Not a whole lot there. Etsy was slightly more helpful, but I am ~~a cheapskate~~ frugal and didn't want to spend $5 per cute mask holder thing. (why spend $5 on one when you can spend $250 and 12 hours of your time, amiright?) Sooooo, I dragged four masked kiddos and met up with my awesomely crafty mom, and we went to the craft store and I bought ribbon and snaps and made some cute mask “leashes” for lack of a better word. Each one takes about 22 inches of 5/8 inch cloth ribbon and 4 snaps. (And a snap tool if you don’t already have one... I didn’t). I bought the tool and enough snaps for 180 leashes and enough ribbon for 90 leashes for about 60 dollars on sale at my local hobby lobby. Which honestly makes each mask leash under a flipping dollar!!!!