About a year-and-a-half ago, I learned something.
Socks . . . are a big deal.
Especially to boys.
What I’ve never considered an important fashion statement in my own wardrobe has turned into a high dollar industry. What used to be a type of specialty socks for people with diabetes (tight and something you have to get used to) now have pictures or stripes or logos that make them all the rage with fashion-conscious boys.
And even with some who really aren’t so fashion-conscious, like mine.
But my poor boys still have the same penny-pinchin’ mama who can’t justify shelling out $20 (or more) for a single pair of socks, so they depend on Grammy to add such extravagances to their lives.
A year ago Christmas, she did just that. (That’s fourteen months ago, to be clear.)
But one of the pairs of socks had a problem. My mother is honest to the core, so I know it was a mistake on the store’s part, but one pair was still fastened together with a security dealy-whomper. And not just a regular dealy-whomper, but an ink-spraying dealy-whomper.
Which means there was no hammering or sawing or other type of round-about removal possible.
I needed to take the socks back to the store to have the dealy-whomper removed. But every time I picked them up, thought about sawing and then saw (once again) the warning about exploding ink, my heart sank and the weight of my feet increased and I set them back down on the cluttered dresser and felt the guilt of a mother wasting a perfectly-good-if-not-for-an-exploding-dealy-whomper pair of ridiculously over-priced socks.
After repeating this scenario at least six times over the fourteen months, I happened to look at the size last week.
Yee-haw. These fourteen months of Sock Guilt just so happen to also be the fourteen months in which the kid who was given these socks increased his foot size by a third. Seriously.
These dealy-whompered socks no longer fit!!!! And the guilt is gone.
Let’s hope someone who pays 50 cents for them at a thrift store has a little more follow-through than I do and is willing to take them somewhere where the exploding theft-preventer can be removed.
There’s no moral to this story. If there was, it would be: if you procrastinate long enough, sometimes you get lucky and the problem goes away.
But that’s a terrible moral.
So really, it’s just a story.
For detailed guides, check out my books: How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind and Decluttering at the Speed of Life.
--Nony
That’s my mending pile theory, too! Usually, by the time I get around to doing actual mending, the clothes don’t fit the kids anymore. Problem solved!
😛
yes if you procastinate and have the if I haven’t used this in so long rule well honestly if you can servive a full rotaition of laundry like a weeks worth of laundry without missing it you probobly are not going to bother to mend or return or deal with the whatever. if it is something that you miss from your wordrobe or the other person misses you wont be able to put it off. if your son or sons did not bug you at least 14 times in 14 months asking you to return those socks because they wanted to wear them they didn’t miss them. oh and I have nephews who are fashionable I know what you mean. I think the 14 year old has less socks than days of the week but they are the fashion ones and he will do his own laundry and always make sure he has these socks clean he gravitates towards laziness he is not a hard work or awesome with time management at all but apparently his fashion sense over rides that. I know the moral of your story if you don’t miss it you didn’t need it in the first place.
My son was given a coat by his grandma with one of those security tags on it and two months later it’s still there. I need to get it removed…… I just am lazy lol.
I have this exact problem to often to admit. I’ve decided that the post Xmas purchases that are to late to return are now going to be gifts for the giving tree at church this year. Sooo, I am ahead of the game now. One said gift was a nice winter hat my husband bought but is to small for my head. Another is a pair of hiking boots I bought for my oldest (bought 2 sizes because he couldn’t decide which ones fit best) and never returned. The other day when I accepted that it was to late to get refunds and was feeling awful about wasting money it dawned on me – I can save them for gifts for next year at church.
Excellent idea for the gift giving!
Your designer sock problem brought to mind the mismatched sock bag I had for probably five years. Going through it for only God knows how many times, I found one that one of the kids hadn’t been able to fit in for ages – and it finally dawned on me that it was taking up valuable space – for NO good reason. So, having recently read an article about using old and/or mismatched socks for cleaning rags, that’s what I did. And after I was done with each one, I tossed it. I sure didn’t need that many, lol.
Now, my biggest problems is gifts I can’t use from people I don’t want to hurt. Usually clothing-type gifts I would only wear if it was a choice between that and walking around in public without a stitch on. And so those still take up valuable room, collecting dust. At least until I’m sure the giver has forgotten about it, then I donate. 😀