So over at Rocks in my Dryer, Shannon wants us to post our requests for tips. I didn't think I had one until ...
The Sock Problem
Ya'll--four people wear socks in this house. For some reason, socks disappear in the laundry. How exactly can I get socks to go through the wash together and still get clean? I need a system that will work with children (ages 4 and 6) and with my husband, who is organizationally challenged and a slob. Help! No idea is too stupid, trust me. If you have found a way to keep sock pairs intact, without buying 65 pairs of identical socks (remember, I have girls and girls like pretty socks that coordinate withe their outfits, or at least Mamas do), I want to know about it.
9 comments:
Have a container of saftey pins near your washer, pin matching socks together before tossing them in the washer and voila, socks are together through both the washer and dryer!
I've been doing this with my baby since he was born, but there's no reason it can't be scaled up for bigger people too. Take a lingerie bag and put it where ever the socks normally come off (mine's on the changing table). As the socks come off, they both go into the bag. When it's time for laundry, the whole bag goes in and both socks should always come back out. When I can't find a mate, I just leave the extra sock in the bag until its mate turns up.
Of course, I'm a "white socks only" kind of girl, so you might need to tailor this approach for socks of color.
In any case, this might take some training (especially with your husband) before it sticks, but it theoretically should at least help with your problem.
For socks we need to make sure stay matched, we saftey pin them together before they go into the wash. We also use different color sharpie markers on the toes or bottoms so the girls can match their "color" quickly.
Try placing each person's socks into individual lingerie bags. That way you at least know whose socks are whose.
Mesh laundry bags work great for this. Each child/adult has their own color of bag, and they put their socks into it when they take them off. This way, the socks are already sorted according to size and pairs are never lost!
I, too, use mesh laundry bags. Instead of putting them in before the wash, I put the clean ones in after washing. Each person has their own mesh bag. Most of the socks for each person are the same kind and do not have to be matched. For instance, my son has all white and grey athletic socks from Old Navy and about 2 pairs each of khaki and navy. Since there are so few socks that are not the white athletic socks, they stand out and are easy to find. The same goes for my daughter. She mainly has white bobby socks and just a few pairs of pink or ruffle socks, which stand out in the bag.
We also got rid of all my husband's black socks and got 1 kind of black socks. So, his athletic socks are in one bag and his black socks are in another. That was kind of scary throwing away a huge pile of socks and spending money to buy new but it was worth every penny for my sanity. I also keep my black socks in one bag and my white socks in another.
Hope this helps!
They're supposed to match?
Geez, maybe all my unmatched socks are hanging out with your unmatched socks! This is an age old problem that I don't have all the solutions to, but I have a few.
One thing I do is, I keep a small laundry basket in the laundry room, where my girls keep all their shoes and all socks go in this baskets (it's actually a small trash can). The other things I do, is I buy all my kids socks at Target. I buy the kind that have the rings around toes based on the shoe size. My older daughter has 3 rings and my younger daughter has 2. I usually only buy 2 styles of socks, dress and athletic. I can usually match all those up, since they are similar. Not sure what advice to give you about your husband.
My mom had us put a small rubberband (those tiny colored ones for little kids hair)around our socks. It didn't require the finger coordination as safty pins.
Post a Comment