Works For Me Wednesday: How I'll Never Sort (Or Match) Socks Again

Sorting socks sucks, doesn't it? It takes time, there's always a sock or three missing, and there's really no good way to pair them together for storing without stretching them out. You fold them over and flip the ankle part of the outside one back so it hold them? The outside one gets stretched. You stuff one inside the other? The outside one gets stretched! So then you end up with half your socks missing and the other half stretched all out and gross.

But not my socks. I've eliminated the hassle of sorting and matching socks from my life completely, and it's made so much more room in my laundry day for other things (like folding and hanging and de-fuzzing and searching for that damned bounce sheet that always gets lost and ends up hanging out of the back of my shirt ...)

Anyway, back to the point. No more sock-matching, right?

The method I like to use is a simple one: don't buy a dozen different kinds of socks. Right now, especially for my family, socks are easy. For myself, I  always buy these: Hanes Women's ComfortBlend No Show, White. It means no sorting, no matching, no pairing. I just have a sock drawer that I put all my socks into, and when I need socks, I pull out the first two I touch. When I notice that one is getting stretched out from overwear or worn through, I throw it out. When I noticed that I don't seem to have a lot of socks anymore, I buy another pack. Easy.

For Josephine, I buy socks in all sorts of fun colors and patterns - except white. I do this for two reasons:

1. She's a wild kid who likes fun patterns and colors - sometimes she even likes to mismatch her socks on purpose (usually only when she's wearing pants that will hide them).
2. Her feet are the same size as mine now, so it's easy to go through the socks and put all the big white ones in my drawer, and the big crazy-patterned/colored ones in hers.

For Eden, I buy the same socks as mine for the most part, except that hers are obviously smaller than mine, so it's easy to separate hers from mine when I do the laundry. Eden's feet are growing though, so I make sure her socks also have colored stripes at the bottoms - unlike mine, which have no color except for the Hanes branding across the ball of the foot. She does have a few pairs of fun socks too though, such as Frozen, Sophia the First, and a couple of other fun patterns. (But for these, since Eden is seven, sorting all of the socks and pairing her own has become a great age-appropriate "chore" for her.)

But as simple as it all sounds, in the end it means no more sorting, no more matching, no more pairing. Ever again.

And that?

Well, it works for me.

Questions for the Comments Section:

• How do you manage all the socks in your house?

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