diff --git a/wicd/misc.py b/wicd/misc.py
index c749eda..fd83791 100644
--- a/wicd/misc.py
+++ b/wicd/misc.py
@@ -415,6 +415,18 @@ def noneToString(text):
     else:
         return to_unicode(text)
 
+def sanitize_escaped(s):
+    """ Sanitize double-escaped unicode strings. """
+    lastpos = 0
+    while True:
+        lastpos = s.find('\\x', lastpos + 1)
+        #print lastpos
+        if lastpos == -1:
+            break
+        c = s[lastpos+2:lastpos+4]  # i.e. get the next two characters
+        s = s.replace('\\x'+c, chr(int(c, 16)))
+    return s
+
 def to_unicode(x):
     """ Attempts to convert a string to utf-8. """
     # If this is a unicode string, encode it and return
@@ -423,17 +435,7 @@ def to_unicode(x):
     if isinstance(x, unicode):
         return x.encode('utf-8')
 
-    # FIXME: this is a workaround to correctly parse utf-8
-    # encoded ESSIDs returned by iwlist -- python replaces
-    # \xNN with \\xNN, thus losing the characters :/.
-    # It should really be handled in a better way. Maybe
-    # using index()/find()?
-    if '\\' in x:
-        begin = x.split('\\x')[:1]
-        chars = x.split('\\x')[1:]
-        end = [chars[-1][2:]]
-        chars[-1] = chars[-1][:2]
-        x = ''.join(begin + map(lambda c: chr(int(c, 16)), chars) + end)
+    x = sanitize_escaped(x)
 
     encoding = locale.getpreferredencoding()
     try: