Due to extreme arthritis in my hip I am unable to bend down to tie my shoes. I have a little over 40 pairs of shoes that I thought I would never be able to wear again until I discovered elastic shoelaces. I like to use these elastic shoelaces on my dress shoes. To tie the shoes I insert a shoe stretcher to fill out the shoe, place them on my lap, and then tie them up. To put the tied shoes on, I insert my foot into the shoes using a long shoehorn, they stretch enough to allow my foot to enter into the shoe and they retract to stay snug on my foot.