Love the sock question!  I have 6 boys and I love summer when they want to wear flip-flops!  But otherwise I buy Hanes socks which have “Hanes” written on the bottom in different colors depending on size.  I have 2 boys wearing each colored size so I just buy them in bulk. (After one particularly frustrating sock day(month?year?) several years ago I spent my “mad” money on new socks with this system—and now I’m not “mad” anymore!).

I second the Hanes idea—I love it!  They also have the same system for girls but the heels and toes are colored (purple for one age, pink for another etc).  I still get “singles” but I am much more likely to find a mate with the next round of washing!

I have 4 girls (8, 5, 2 1/2 twins) and one boy (7).  The older three have Gold toe socks for school (they have uniforms so can only wear white, navy or black) and they are the ones with one, two or three stripes.  Play socks are Hanes.  The little girls have a bunch of hand me down white socks.  I only buy white because they can be bleached and are easier to match and I only do one load of socks a week.  I do keep a lost sock box and go through it every week or two to keep up on it and after a few weeks of the same socks they get pitched.  We have a tight budget but it was worth it to get all new socks for the older three this fall to make my life easier.  I got the Gold Toe on sale at Kohl’s with an extra coupon.  Socks are not worth getting mad about

I also buy Hanes; they last longer than any other kind, worth the slight extra cost!  We have four boys, but I only buy two sizes of socks for now, medium and large, and the color coding makes them very easy to sort and fold.  All boys’ socks live in a milk crate in the bathroom (which doubles as my laundry area).  It is so much easier than trying to make sure four different boys have enough socks in four different drawers!

I recently bought new socks for my daughter & son.  Since they each have just one kind of sock, I don’t pair them up anymore.  They go into the drawer loose & we just grab two knowing they all match.  I found it was worth the investment for my sanity’s sake.
My sister puts all her socks into mesh laundry bags as she dirties them so the socks all stay together in the wash. Maybe that would work for you if you had a different bag for each child.

You could get a pack of multi-colored sharpies and just make dots on the heels.  I only have one boy and one husband (did I need to say that?) and their socks are obviously different.  But my s-in-law has six sons and she did the sharpie thing.

My mother used to have us kids sort the single/missing sock basket every month or so. Then she’d give us some of the hopeless singles for sock puppets. Sometimes it was a chore we tried to avoid and sometimes (especially my sister and I!) we kind of enjoyed it. I was peaceful, sitting-at-the-table kind of stuff and much more fun/social than cleaning! Your 6 yr old is probably old enough to do some sock-matching.

(and for homeschoolers - it’s a great way to teach patterns and matching. I do this with my 4 yr old when there are a lot of socks in the laundry).

Also - I second the Hanes suggestion. My older son, my husband, and I all have Hanes and I appreciate how easy it is to sort them out with the color system.

We do the Hanes socks too! 

I have seven daughters.  The two little ones have a basket with the pink toed socks, the three middle ones have a basket with the purple toed socks, and the two older ones do their own laundry and their socks don’t get mixed… but they have the blue toed Hanes. 

The babies laundry is also washed separate from the middle girls’ laundry, so no colors are ever mixed and we never have to sort.  We can close our eyes, take any two socks from the basket, and have a match.  :D

My MIL did the stitched dot…  her blue eyed son got a blue dot and her brown eyed son got a brown dot.  Her daughter didn’t get a dot. 

I am sort of rushed to get things done and make it to Mass tonight so I hope I don’t offend if I repeat a suggestion. I buy sock bags from Dollar tree( three in a pack for $1) Each family member has two ( one to go in the laundry & another to use while one is in or waiting to be put away)I put names on with a sharpie so it doesn’t wash off or bleed. After taking their socks off, they go into the bag. After they get washed the whole bag comes back ( I don’t even open them). This works great as my children are all teens and colored socks don’t cut it. My son and husband also have exceptionally big feet ( 14&16;) so I couldn’t even buy different brands as only one seems to have good socks in their size.

Thank you everyone for the super sock suggestions! I think the stitched color-dot or (more likely to happen for me) the colored sharpie dot idea may be just what I am looking for. I actually do have the kids sort socks, but they all look so similar it’s just too hard for them. I love the color matching idea. One day I may even toss them all in favor of a new batch of easy to match socks, but we’ll see if thisother idea doesn’t fix the problem first.
Thanks again, and many prayers to all of you moms out there doing the best you can to make life all the more sweeter for your families!

We buy the striped by size (1,2 or 3 stripes) from Target.  This helps a ton (as I’m sure marking them would as well).  What helped me the most was to put a shoe organizer in my laundry room, the kind that hangs on the back of the door.  I wrote each person’s name (all 9 of us) on a pocket.  When I do the laundry I don’t wash socks separately, most of the socks end up in the same load since they are near each other in the laundry pile.  I match the socks right when I fold the basketful of clothes.  If there are any stragglers I glance at the shoe/pocket organizer and look at that person’s pocket.  If I see the match - great - I pull it out - done.  If not I just toss it in their pocket.  When it gets full I pull all their stragglers out and see if there are any pairs.  I figure that when I pick it up the first time I know who it goes to - why put it in a basket of socks from all of us?  Even if I go through the sock pockets once a week it only take less than 5 minutes because they are already sorted by person.  And, my kids have been told to never keep stragglers in their drawer, they throw it down the clothes chute even if it’s clean (since the other one is probably in the pocket waiting for it’s match).  They find this kinda funny since I get quite angry about them throwing other clean clothes down the chute (like when they are cleaning up and that’s quicker for them).

I haven’t tried it yet, but Suzanne at Blessed Among Men posted this one:

http://blessedamongmen.blogspot.com/2009/11/nuts-for-thanksgiving.html

I’m looking forward to trying it. Suzanne may very well read this blog too….the interconnections of Catholic blogs!

We have shoebox size containers for our sacramental keepsakes.  Mine has my Baptism keepsakes (candle, cards, pictures, garment), First Communion stuff (mostly cards), and my Confirmation picture and certificate.  Most of it seems a bit delicate to display, although, I do look at it occasionally, especially around the sacramental anniversaries.

Another option is to put the items into a shadow box frame on the wall.  The frames aren’t cheap ($20+ for an 8x10), but they allow you to display 3-D objects rather than have them stuck in a drawer somewhere.