A life of love

A life of love
Everyone should have a Great Pyrenees

Friday, August 13, 2010

The sock monster

I don't know if you experience this at your house, but I just cannot believe that we are the only ones who deal with socks magically disappearing, never to find a mate again.

It seems that we spend a great deal of laundry time (or at least post laundry time) with our sock basket trying to match up all the socks.  When we are folding laundry, clean socks get tossed into the sock basket (basically because no one wants to do socks).  And somehow, then getting pairs to members of the family seems to be a hopeless task.

At least once a week (I hope) I dump out the basket, and start sorting.  It is a huge pile (since there are ten of us).  So I sort it into long and short socks and colored socks.  From there it is broken down into other distinctions to help narrow down the possibilities.  And I still end up using most of the living room floor to spread things out so I can see all the socks so I can find the mates.  Needless to say this is a process, and to make it endurable, I put on something I like to watch/listen to, like History Detectives or Naked Archeologist or something like that.  I actually consider it bribery, to myself.

And then after socks are matched up, then you have to match them with the owner.  Yet another circus.

So many of the kids wear the same sizes and similar socks.  And take mine too!

Not a fine tuned system but limping along.

It used to be that we put dots on the toe of each sock to designate the owner - one dot for the oldest child, two for the next and on down. 

Yeah, well, putting eight dots on a sock is ridiculous.  And time consuming.  And ridiculous.

We stopped that after we had more than five children.  It worked with five, but even five dots got cumbersome.

And now sock sorting/obtaining is just a pain in the patotie (is that really a word?).

The newest plan was to get all new socks for each member of the family - a different style for each person.

Yeah, but there are ten of us. 

That's a lot of distinctive styles to find and then remember who has which one.

Ugh.  And costly.

Well, I found socks on sale today.  And today was payday. 

So, I talked to each kid, got a vote on the kind of sock he/she likes,  and got the best deal I could.  Even on sale, that is a pricey trip!

Well, when I got home, we matched up each kid with their chosen socks, and then put their initials on each sock that belongs to them. 

Now, the hope is that this will make matching a lot easier and accurate, as well as everyone needed new socks anyway.

I will let you know how it goes.  Though I do forsee my kids having to explain why there are letters on their socks.  I hope they come up with something more creative than "Mom is trying to beat the sock monster"!

LOL!  Just another interesting day to day challenge of raising a large family.

"For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans for hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11

2 comments:

MK said...

I tried the different styles too! I definitely know Seth's...Nike, black, no show. Alex, some show, white. Tamirat, very little. Obsi, very cheap because I wasn't sure what size he would wear.

It would be nice if they would just wear sandals w/o socks all summer!

gbmom2407 said...

Growing up we had or first initial on our socks also. Who cares if someone asks about it. I figure if it is on the bottom of the sock, and someone sees it that means they were somewhere where they were comfortable enough to take their shoes off. PS we used to "borrow" my dad's socks out of his drawer when we couldn't find our own. LOL