I’ll admit it.
I’m a sock stealer.
Hubby learned this early on in our marriage and gifted me with many socks in an assortment of colors on our first Christmas.
It didn’t work. His felt better.
Anyway, as my 10 year old has grown, I’ve started eyeing his socks too. There’s just something so terribly convenient about a matched pair of socks that will totally fit me, when my own drawer is empty.
Last week, as I was sweating at Zumba, I looked down and realized that I definitely didn’t recognize the pair of socks I was wearing. I knew they were stolen when I put them on, I just assumed they were stolen from my own family member.
Which makes it totally okay, right?
But these socks have a Nike symbol and I know I’ve never purchased any Nike socks for my boys. Soooo, I hadn’t just stolen my own child’s socks (which totally doesn’t feel like stealing) . . . I’d stolen my kid’s friend’s socks.
(Which totally does feel like stealing.)
And knowing that the mother of the child who likely left these socks at my house was very likely in the same Zumba class, made me wonder . . .
Do other mothers count socks? Do they know when a pair is missing?
Do they have any idea when these socks go missing? Or where?
All these things went through my head as I tried to Zumba without drawing any undue attention to my less-than-coordinated feet.
And yes, if you read my blog and have been meaning to ask for your son’s socks back, you’ll probably need to come over and get them. The chances of me remembering to bring them to you are pretty slim.
Just call at least two hours before you come.
That will give me enough time to wash them. Y’know, in case I’m wearing them.
Um, how about you just go buy yourself some more socks…the kind you like? Of course I’m saying that knowing full well that I need to go through and purge all the socks I don’t really like, but have hung onto for years because, you know, there might be a time that I have to wear them. I’m better with my kids’ and husband’s socks. Learning to just throw them out when they get too worn (even before they have an actual hole!) and realize that in the grand scheme of the clothing budget, a package or 2 of new socks is not going to make much of a difference…especially when I realize I last threw out all my husband’s old socks and started fresh when our Kindergartner was born! I threw out all the unmatched socks when we moved a year ago…that felt great! Until several months later (ok, maybe it was just a couple months ago) I discovered the bag of socks that I’d THOUGHT I’d thrown out, but had somehow moved with us. Pretty sure I’ve gotten rid of them now.
Wow, that was a lot about socks! Dishes done, counters clean, floors swept and vacuumed…I’m so much happier getting into a routine now that school is back in session!
My house may look like a natural disaster, but I am a HUGE stickler for making sure all socks are accounted for BEFORE I put them in the wash. 🙂
I would be one of those moms who have no clue if socks are missing. I have baskets of unmatched socks. When I was single, I would go buy new socks just to avoid matching up my old socks. I went so far as to throw all my socks out and buy only one type of sock so I wouldn’t have to match up socks. (Don’t judge me.)
I’m about ready to do that again now with 3 people in the house. One style for me, one for hubby, and one for the boy. I HATE matching socks!
I don’t count socks, but I do find socks at the house and wonder where they came from. Most often, they are my adult brother’s, or a pair my daughter borrowed from my mom when visiting, but it irks me to have pilfered socks around, so put them away from the other socks until there is a sock emergency, then they are back in the mix.
I have a singleton sock system, and I try to be pretty good about matching things up once in a while. Try.
I have 15 pair of the same kind of sock for myself because I hate looking for a missing sock, and when one sock gets a hole in it, I only throw out the one sock with the hole, not a pair. When my stash of socks starts getting low, I go buy more of the exact.same.socks so that I can keep the cycle going. 🙂
Nope, I don’t count socks. I have a singles bar in the bottom of one of our laundry baskets for lonely socks who need to find a mate (and yes, I put clean clothes on top of the singles bar on a regular basis and just keep sorting, folding, and matching). Sometimes we find the mate, sometimes the kids outgrow the single sock before I find the mate. I should probably check that basket and purge the stuff that my 4-year-old wore when she was 18 months old…
I HATE matching socks. Seriously. I’d rather clean the toilet. I try to buy each family member their own type of socks so there aren’t multiple colors/patterns to match up. My mother-in-law keeps buying my kids colored socks. I appreciate the thought, but frankly, it drives me nuts! I just want one type of sock per person to have to match up.
I find socks all the time that I have never purchased. I have no idea how or when we acquired them, let alone from whom! I do have 7 children, but I only buy one brand/color of socks for specific children (same for underwear). for example, my husband gets Hanes socks with red writing, my teenage son gets Fruit of the Loom with gray over the entire bottom of the foot – voila, easy to tell them apart. I secretly cringe when my kids get socks as gifts (like, from a well-meaning Grandma), because now I have to remember that child X gets the white socks AND the pink socks (or whatever it is). I also hate it when my teen daughter “borrows” my socks because I always make sure my socks are in the laundry basket TOGETHER, while she does not. So, I’ll find only ONE of my socks … and it’s usually inside-out. That’s when the ranting begins! Socks are NOT my friends!
Oh, and when my mismatched sock pile gets too big and they’ve been sitting there too long … they get recycled to Goodwill (who will take any and all textiles, because they can make money off of them no matter what). When the sock count gets low (i.e., a kid complains s/he has NO socks), I will replace them, knowing we get to go through this all over again.
I did try some sock matching ring things once, but no one but my husband and I used them, so they didn’t help. 🙁 The idea is wonderful, though – when you take off your socks, put the ring on them and throw them in the laundry basket. Then, they get washed that way and returned to you – no sock matching needed! Too bad it only works if the kids cooperate.
I’m always losing my socks and my son’s socks and find them next season, but I’ve never found socks that weren’t mine. that is hilarious babe.
Under my bed is a full size laundry bag full of my socks and tights that I bunged in there last time I tried to sort my sock drawer enough to actually close it. I’m pretty sure in there are things such as the legwarmers I last wore at university 10years ago and the orange woolly tights that were once part of an emu fancy dress costume. But you know, I’m sure I’ll be glad I kept it when my now baby daughter needs a bunch of old tights for a spider Halloween costume sometime. Right?
Anyway, if anyone is short of clean socks you know where to come.
Every once in a while I will get some random pair of socks that belongs to no one in our house. I think they come in from scout campouts but I can never be sure. I pitch them immediately. I wouldn’t know if an entire pair of socks was missing because my kids are older and put their own clean laundry away, and they have more than one week’s worth of socks. If they have no clean socks at all then they need to do a better job of gathering up their dirty clothes. Odd socks go in a basket on top of the dryer and once a year in the summertime I’ll throw away any that have accumulated but it’s usually not more than a couple. As socks get a hole I’ll toss it, and then it’s still-good mate will go in the basket until half of some other pair gets discarded. Just before school starts we buy everyone new socks for school/work/church/etc. It’s a system that works for us. : )
I don’t count them, buuuut I have been stealing my son’s socks this summer. When I wear Capri pants but want to wear tennis shoes instead of sandals. His are like low cut ones and I am hoping they look a little less dorky than my regular ankle high ones :p
This made me giggle. Because that’s exactly the rationale I would use!
It’s interesting the things that happen to socks. Like where do they disappear to? I don’t count socks but I do notice when I end up with an odd number. Maybe somebody like you is wearing the missing socks. At least they have a good home! 🙂
I don’t steal my 11-year-old son’s socks — he steals mine! Then I usually don’t want them back because he manages to get the bottoms wayyy dirtier than I ever do.
I’m just trying to get my head around actually having someone else’s kid at your house for long enough that they would lose a pair of socks! LOL! We don’t have friends over…too embarrassing! And no, I don’t count socks. I have tons of mismatched socks.
we find odd socks ALL THE TIME…
usually lonely ones…all out by the trampoline…some matching and oddly some not…
i figure if mom wanted them back, she could come ask..lol…i just have too much other stuff to manage…and often close enough match is good enough, when i know my son KILLS his socks…(that and shoes, it’s his special talent)’
as a recovering hoarder with a chaotic slob brain(who is learning orginzation)…. I will share my sock related former shame, I use to save EVERY sock that I found at home with out a mate… It went on for years, it graduated from a small pile, to a small basket to a big basket, and after YEARS I had a large BLACK trash bag, like you use for leafs!….
as in life, when we keep dragging around our old “baggage” – those unreached goals, those failures, those past mistakes – eventually we need to come to a place where we ask ourselves WHY and quit making excuses …. sure I had great intentions to make coin purses, sock dolls, homemade puppets….. but one day I had to look at that bag and LET GO of them!!!! (this was sooooo hard!)
now all my socks have colors and designs AND mates – my grand daughters do, too …. and my hubby has all white in the same brand and HE deals with them. I have a small (3 inch tall) box on the corner on my dresser, and that is where an unmatched sock waits for its mate…. right now I have 5 singles that are sitting there waiting for the next load to get out of the dryer…. that’s about my allowance – No more keeping sock so long that the grandkids could wear their own parents socks (if they ever found the match, LOL)
luckily we move like nomads..(grrr) and after moving all the furniture out…we either find the mates to socks..and at that point i can pitch the lone ones…
now when we do a good cleaning upstairs (which doesn’t happen often enough)
i litterally stare at it in panick and ask hubby permission to throw them out..and then i buy new socks..and i try to get the same ones everytime (IF THEY CAN STILL MAKE THEM) now apparently after buying dd a dozen socks…the fad is to no longer match them??? so that saves that job!
Ok, here is me completely ridiculous theory about socks and dryers: all dryers are connected via a system of tunnels in which live laundry gnomes. These mischievous gnomes love to steal single socks out of dryers and occasionally deposit random socks back into your dryer. That is the only explination I can come up with for ending up with socks of unknown origin. If only they would be helpful and fold the dry laundry instead!
* my*, no ‘me’.
I used to freak out when my kids socks didn’t match up after laundry. I’d scratch my head and look everywhere. After years of this I asked them what was going on. Apparently they didn’t wear matching socks. Freedom!!
I don’t have the sock issue. We just put a single sock in the drawer, and if it doesn’t turn up in 6mo-yr, it gets trashed.
My kids sort the laundry, and all our laundry goes in a family bin & we don’t generally have clothes throwers, I am a stickler about shoes & socks being put away immediately upon taking off, so I’ll just tell people to do it until they get the picture.
I do have a funny story about kids shoes…
Made even more funny cause it happened in front of my babysitter turned personal assistant, that I literally begged off the street, cause I was so desperate for help. Turns out she’s great, and I’m so sad she’ll be moving as college students do after she graduates.
Her and I had been consistently working on kids clothes for several months when we got to the great tub of bigger kids shoes. Shoes I had seen at a thrift store, and I could store until kids were big enough.
Thankfully said personal assistant is well aware of my quirks, and doesn’t mind working with me on projects in the way that works for my brain.
So we’re sorting shoes that hadn’t been grouped together for probably a couple years & had several pairs added to the tub, I also have girls & a boy in my house, so that’s starting to become an issue with some clothing.
We get everything sorted, and the kids size 5 is just looking so BIG, like bigger than the shoes I wear.
At some point M drops some knowledge on me, that kids sizes are 2 sizes smaller in number than women’s.
So my oldest, who clearly is going to be taller than me, for sure, pretty soon, like probably before 13, and is already in size 5 kids shoes, went from being in my head, behind me in shoe size, to wearing MY SHOES in one instant!!!
It took me a while to fully wrap my head around this.
She actually walked through the door minutes after me realizing this, and I just had to tell her!
I know this won’t last forever,cause she’s still growing, but for the time being, I’m thankful to ha e caught this moment of us being the same shoe size, before it flew by without me knowing!!