I like to wear a little jewelry even when I’m “only” visible to my household. The pandemic hasn’t affected my daily wardrobe at all!

Rings, watches, and most bracelets feel to me as if they interfere with my daily activities, but earrings and necklaces make me happy. Adding a little sparkle—and even more color—to an outfit is something I do for myself, not to show off or impress others.

Yet another annoying side effect of systemic arthritis is the sometimes unpredictable stiffness in my fingers that makes tiny clasps difficult to manage. It’s no accident that all the earrings in my photo above are hooks that don’t require attaching itty bitty backs!

Add slightly paranoid tendencies to even mild physical disability, and I can end up feeling frantic* about a necklace that I can’t get off when I want it gone. This scenario triggers my claustrophobia, in fact.

For this reason—and because my only simple, black vinyl? pendant cord c. 1994? recently broke, leaving me with no aesthetically pleasing option for wearing a favorite amber bead—I went looking for a replacement with an easier to manipulate clasp. I wanted to upgrade to a thin, genuine leather strap with a magnetic fastener.

Et voilà!

I turned to Etsy, though I often struggle on that site to identify actual self-employed artisans vs. foreign outfits with unknowable labor practices. I ended up buying two leather necklaces with magnetic fasteners made by Bracelet Street USA, a woman-owned business in Kentucky if I’m reading their About page right. I’ve had no personal contact with this company aside from making the single online purchase.

First, allow me to admit that I feel like an utter fool for having waited this long to seek out more manageable jewelry clasps. Obviously, it could be costly or impossible to retrofit a large collection of mostly inexpensive, costume jewelry, but there was nothing preventing me from making this useful discovery except my own lack of attention.

Sometimes, the steady barrage of failures that come from living with autoimmune disease can prevent me from even trying new solutions that turn out to be easy fixes.

When everyday life confronts you constantly with “trivial” activities you can no longer manage for yourself, it is easy to become disheartened and just give up on stuff. This sometimes applies to things you love. Even silly little victories—like wearing a favorite pendant—enhance the texture of life’s fabric, and are worth pursuing.

For those with fully able bodies, some of the visible manifestations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) can seem excessive or superfluous—“too many” empty handicapped spots in an otherwise packed lot, or the lift at the public pool that a healthy observer never sees used—but the reality is that, for those who have been cut off from so many common daily tasks, accommodations like these make the difference between feeling welcome to participate in the world at large…or not.

My new necklaces aren’t going to suddenly empower the disenfranchised or fundamentally change the world, but they do look nice, work precisely as they should, and offer me the dignity of doing one more thing for myself. That makes the purchase money well spent.

I ordered two magnetic clasp, 3mm diameter necklaces, one a #25 Natural Black (15 inch) and the other a #3 Bronze Metallic (18 inch), paying $26.56 including tax. I was sent a third (18 inch Metallic Tamba†) for free as an unexpected “gift with purchase.”

I’m assuming such little additions are par for the course with this company. Bracelet Street could have had no way of knowing I am a blogger** who might write about the purchase. I didn’t even login to my existing Etsy account since I was accessing the site from my phone instead of my desktop and I couldn’t remember the password. I wouldn’t have seemed like a special customer of any sort.

Bracelet Street USA shipped their products in sufficient, simple packaging that protected what was inside without creating too much superfluous waste. Each necklace came in a labeled mini zip top plastic pouch. I save these for use to keep earrings separate and chains untangled when I travel, so they will be re-used.

The inclusion of a hand-written thank you note made an impression on me, and very much increased my desire to share my positive experience with the company. I appreciate a human touch to my purchases, especially when I’m buying hand-crafted items online. I always hope I’m supporting small businesses with satisfied employees, but it can be so hard to tell who you’re doing business with on the web.

If you plan to wear an existing pendant with one of these magnetic clasp necklaces, be aware that I had to have a larger ring added to my amber bead in order for it to fit over either end of the Bracelet Street USA 3 mm leather necklace. The non-opening end of the simple metal “springring”‡ clasp on my old vinyl cord was smaller.

Fortunately for me, my mother-in-law is a hobbyist jewelry maker, so it was easy for her to add a larger link to my pendant. Actually, I believe she gifted me all three of the pendants featured above on my new Bracelet Street necklaces. If, like me, you are buying magnetic clasp necklaces due to a lack of dexterity, you may need a friend or loved one to help you attach a larger bail to some of your own pieces to make them compatible with these thicker fasteners.

I would also like to add that the little bump or nubbin on the insertion side of the fastener is not a button requiring fine manipulation. I wasn’t sure how it worked when I first looked at it. The two ends of the magnetic closure will “snap” together on their own due to the magnet’s attraction, but you aren’t quite done when it does! A slight twisting motion slides the nubbin into the slot on the other side. This seems to provide extra security to what could otherwise be a “breakaway” clasp.

Breakaway jewelry might be ideal protection if you’re operating a lathe, but it’s kind of a bummer when you’re wearing the pendant great-grandma carried with her from the Old Country.

With a lightweight charm, I believe you could get away without the gentle twisting required to get the clasp fully closed, but I did have a heavier pendant (the ammonite fossil visible in my photo above) fall off into my lap before I’d quite mastered the fastening process. Since I learned to fully secure the clasps by twisting, this hasn’t happened again. To be clear, though, I rarely wear heavy jewelry as it exacerbates the discomfort from my systemic arthritis.

If you’re looking for a simple necklace that can be put on and taken off in spite of mild- to moderate-dexterity issues in your hands, I recommend those sold on Etsy by Bracelet Street USA. They are fairly priced, functional, and the company really seems to care about pleasing its customers. Each has a clean, simple aesthetic—appropriate for anyone, masculine or feminine—with 36 colors available in lengths ranging from 12 to 26 inches. I can’t speak to longevity after just a couple of weeks, but my initial impression of the three necklaces in my order is that they offer good quality for the price.

♦

* Even my kids have been subject to my sudden demand to “help, help, help me get this off before I have to start yanking on it!” Since some of my jewelry was my departed mother’s finer stuff, ripping it apart would be less than ideal…

† FYI, “Metallic Tamba” as a color name doesn’t mean much to me. I’d describe the shade as a multi-hued, warm-toned, mostly dark brown metallic melange

** Frankly, I’m also not a very significant blogger, so I’m not sure “knowing who I am” would have any effect on the way any merchant would treat me!

‡ I had to look up the proper name for the round, metal circular fastener with the tiny lever you have to pull with a fingernail to open it, pulling an itsy bitsy wire out of the center of the hollow hoop. The internet told me it is a springring clasp, invented around 1921.