Bury Your Thumb First to Get a Thin Work Glove On

The Problem

Thin nitrile and latex gloves — the disposable blues and blacks — grip skin instead of sliding over it, especially on hands that are damp or already dirty. Feeding your fingers in one at a time, the glove rolls up ahead of them, a fingertip misses its stall and doubles under, and you end up peeling the whole thing back off to start again.

The Technique

The thumb goes in first and everything else follows it.

1. Hold the glove by the cuff with your other hand, fingers of the glove pointing down.
2. Push your thumb all the way into the thumb stall — right to the tip, not partway. The body of the glove ends up bunched in your palm, so that closing your hand would enclose the whole glove.
3. Stretch the cuff open with your free hand.
4. Rotate your gloved hand around inside the glove until the finger stalls line up with your fingers.
5. Push your fingers straight in. They run into open stalls rather than collapsed ones.