My wonderful hubby was helping me fold laundry this week. It and putting away are the two parts of doing the laundry that I actually can’t stand. I guess because it is so time consuming. Anywho, He started gently laying out the socks asking where their matches were. My reply, “In the basket“.” He looked confused, “What basket?” I guess I took for granted that he knew, “You know, the basket of socks in our room. That is where I put them all. Then everyone goes and digs.” I had never verbalized my evil sock plot before. What followed was either the look of horror, or the look of finally knowing where all his socks were.
You see, I am human. There are only so many hours in a day I am willing to sit and organize socks. I have 3 kids and so many different patterns of socks it is not even funny. Someone could dedicate hours to “the sock basket” and not finish. Here I thought I was a genius, but after the look I just got I am beginning to wonder. It was time for drastic measures.
“You know what, let’s just throw them away and start over.” There I said it. An easy solution to a difficult problem. Hubby’s head lifts from starring at the laundry, “Really?” He knows how frugal I am, and can’t believe I just volunteered to throw socks away. I continued, “Yep, it is time. Let’s just pitch them and I will run to the store. I will buy every one a brand new pack, and this time. We will fold them.” That basket of socks didn’t have as many matches in it as a thought. Which leads me to a whole other story about where on Earth all of those missing socks actually go. Plus, how do they get missing in the first place? You wear two at a time?
I feel like this was a therapy session on how to let go. We threw the entire basket of old socks away. I went to target and bought every single member of the family a new distinct package of socks. Thank you Hanes for putting different colored lettering on the bottoms! My goal is to fold them with the other laundry and not create a basket of socks again. It may sound silly, but it was very freeing to get rid of those socks that had been taunting me. They reminded me of all the times I didn’t have time to fold, and should have. They were little pieces of cloth chaos in a basket in my room. Now, everyone has 8 pairs of Brand spanking new socks sitting in their drawers. Fingers crossed that the dryer doesn’t eat any of them.
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My mother-in-law says they go over the lip of the washer! I would like to look in there and see how many I find!
The next question is, “What do we do when only one sock in a pair gets a hole?”
Uh-huh, it really never ends.
This past Saturday we just bought3 out of the 6 in my family socks–or so I thought. One of my “helpers” took my bag o’socks out and ended up with two bags for my youngest. Yup…twenty socks for one little pair of feet!
Have a great day.
I always buy the same type of sock for each individual family member. That way they always match. Daughter has hanes with purple leters. I have hanes with pink letters and hubby wears gold toe socks (black and white). Baby wears plain white socks. I dont even match socks, I just throw all of the like socks into each individual sock drawers (and I dont fold either). Then when a sock gets a hole, you just throw it away. When the number of socks starts to dwindle, you buy a new package. Also, it helps to wash each family members clothes individually. That way Allisons clothes all get washed, folded and put away at a time. I usually combine whites, but there is enough colors/jeans to do a single load per family member.