COVID 19: Mask hack for better fit & less glasses fogging

 Hey everyone,

In these trying times, one naturally thinks constantly about how to better cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. This post is about that subject.

As someone who wears glasses, it can get quite frustrating when an ill-fitting mask can cause my glasses to fog up, from my warm breath escaping upwards through gaps in that mask. The problem is, how does one get their mask to fit better, actually aligning itself with the shape of your face?

Now, some masks perform better in this respect than others. In particular, the N95 masks with a flattened wire across the bridge of the nose perform quite well. The reason is obvious: the wire allows the wearer to shape the upper portion of the mask along the contours of their nose.

However, not all masks have that wire built in. This is particularly true of cloth masks, which many people use for their re-usable convenience. This is true in my case: I always wear a double-layered cloth mask with a PM 2.5 filter inserted in the pocket between the fabric layers for extra filtering. Thus, I've often encountered the frustration of my glasses suddenly fogging up in the past. The question became, how could I replicate that wire in a pre-existing cloth mask, without spending hours sewing and such.

The answer was found at, of all places, my coffeemaker....or rather, what goes in it. If you look at a bag of supermarket bought coffee, you'll notice a double-wire plastic fastening band on it:

That's when it hit me: why not use this wire on my mask? The plastic bit is large enough to act as a fastening surface, so it makes sense to attach the two, which is exactly what I proceeded to do:

This is actually my second attempt at this, using staples as the fastening agent. I originally used Gorilla Glue, which worked for a while, but after repeated washings, the glue eventually began to come apart. The staples obviously don't have that problem.

As you can see, when I stapled the wire band to the mask, I made sure that the sharp ends of the staples ended up on the outside, so that they wouldn't end up scratching my nose. It made the mask a little bit less fashionable, but I wasn't particularly concerned with that. Since the plastic is quite thin and flexible, I could have used a needle and sewn the band to the mask, but as I said, I didn't want to spend an inordinate amount of time on this. The stapling only took about one minute, which naturally was much more convenient for me.

As it turned out, the wire band cut down the incidents of glasses fogging by at least 80%, right off the bat. All it takes is me smoothing the wire band snugly across my nose. It's actually quite comfortable most of the time, and it's nice not having to think about the issue when I'm out and about.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I hope that this little hack is helpful for some of you reading this, and that it makes your mask-wearing a little bit easier. Be safe.