Wonder What Tiny Pocket on Your Jeans Is For? Here’s the Reason

It's not for your phone MaxPixel

The tiny little pocket that is found in most pairs of jeans has baffled many.

It seems like they’re too small to keep anything of note inside (because it’s hard to get stuff out once you put it in).

But there actually was a use for the pocket at one time, and it’s not just for fashion.

The little pocket was originally for pocket watches (on chains), designed for cowboys and workmen in the 1800s. The pockets have remained ever since.

“Originally included as protection for pocket watches, thus the name, this extra pouch has served many functions, evident in its many titles: frontier pocket, condom pocket, coin pocket, match pocket and ticket pocket, to name a few,” according to the Levi Strauss website.

“Not only is the pocket extremely useful for holding tiny trinkets, it is also ... loved by denimheads for the faded and worn nature it takes on over time.”

Another Use for Jeans: Flotation Device

A German tourist said he survived for hours after he was knocked overboard into the open water near New Zealand.

Arne Murke was helping deliver a yacht from Auckland, New Zealand, to Brazil when they hit a patch of rough seas about 20 miles from Tolaga Bay on March 6, reported the New Zealand Herald.

The yacht’s mainsheet came loose during the rough seas, knocking Murke overboard into the water. He was wearing just a T-shirt and jeans.

“My brother started directly to get me but the swell was like three meters (yards),” he told the Herald. “He threw a life jacket with a rope overboard. I couldn’t reach that, it was already too far away.”

Murke, 30, then used his jeans as a flotation device, which is a technique used by U.S. Navy SEALs and other U.S. military forces.

“Luckily, I knew the trick with the jeans,” he told the paper. “Without the jeans I wouldn’t be here today, they were really the thing that saved me.”

Murke said he saw the technique used several years ago.

To do it, he “took a deep breath” and “made knots at the end of the legs” of the jeans, he told the paper.

Then, he inflated his pants.

“I took a deep breath, took out my jeans, made knots at the end of the legs and inflated the jeans; pull it over water and get air inside and then push it under water. I had like an improvised life vest,” he told the news outlet.