Day 325 - Sock Monster

Years ago, my friend Patti admitted to never putting her family's socks away. Instead she put them into a big communal bin and when they needed socks they sought them out. At that time, we did not have 3 kids like she did, so this process seemed unimaginable. Yet I tucked the hint away for later use.

Socks have a way of disappearing, don't they? A year ago we had a small mesh bag that would hold the mismatched socks until their mates would cycle through the laundry process. Unfortunately, that pile grew and grew.

Then Elise came along and a sock explosion happened. And more socks lost their partners.

By the end of it all, I had the communal bin. But I'd say 50% of it was full of single socks, with no matches. It drove me nuts every morning to go hunt for matching socks for everyone. Some days the kids wore socks that didn't match. I didn't care too much until the day came when a 6 year old at the gym ridiculed Elise for wearing one pink sock and one white sock. I needed to tackle that sock monster once and for all.

Last night my mom and I took on the sock bin and matched what we could. We sorted them by sizes and bagged them up to save for the baby. We put away the ones that are wearable now. We bagged up others to give away (57 pairs!!)


And in the end there were 71 single socks left with no matches. How in the world does this happen??? Where in the heck are they??? I'll never know.