i’m not a mom and likely won’t be anytime in the near future… but i love this!

i do laundry ALL THE TIME (or so it seems) and i hate matching socks. HATE IT.

i did my roommates laundry about a week ago (God bless my soul, lol) and she has SO MANY SOCKS. and clothes… but SO MANY SOCKS. i started to really resent socks.

“why can’t everyone just wear flip flops,” i thought to myself as i growled at the basket and went on the mad hunt for the one red sock i just KNEW had to be somewhere. all the laundry was done and not a single red sock to be found.

... and i needed confession afterward. :-\ haha!

But then what would I do with my bin labeled “Lonely Socks Club”? And can I still watch Mr. Darcy woo Lizzie for the 113th time if I don’t have the excuse of matching socks? I’m not so sure about this new place.

Here’s a question for you.  Do the kids put these on the socks when they put them in the hamper or do you put them on when you place the socks in the laundry?  Also, when do they get taken off the socks - do they tend to get lost?  I’m curious!

Wait, wait, wait!  Are you saying that YOU actually have matching socks BEFORE they go in the wash?  wow.  With 8 kids it seems that many of our socks never find their match again after their first wear straight from the package.  Where do they go?  We don’t even have a dog to blame it on! 

So, I throw it all in the wash.  The laundry folder/sorter of the day (kids rotate doing 2 loads a day) just throws all socks into the big can and then on Saturday it is someone’s chore to sort the socks and divvie them up.  It is time for me to give up on some of them though.  When you have an infant size sock that belonged to your eldest - and he is 19 - and you still haven’t found the match, even if it is the cutest little sock ever, I guess it is time to gasp! throw it away….

Good question, Lisa! I love the idea of just putting the socks back into drawers with the sock cops (like they tell you to do on the site), but I am a realist. I know that if I did that, I would never see my beloved sock cops again.

So I keep a jar of them in the bathroom near the hamper for when I find socks in bedrooms and various other places around the house and bring them to the bathroom or when I am sorting laundry. I also keep some right next to the washer in case I find any loose socks last minute.

After washing and drying, I remove the sock cops and fold socks into one another before returning them to drawers. Older kids and husbands could probably be trained to attach and remove the clips themselves, but I am not yet living that dream!

I have to say, that sounds like a lot of trouble.  I’d still have to go through the 4 different clothes hampers and get the socks sorted before washing.  Personally I’d rather not handle dirty socks more than absolutely necessary (especially tomorrow when I will do the Post-Boy-Scout-Camp Laundry!)
I have a little clothesline in the basement with lonely socks.  Occasionally I demote whatever’s there to “dustrag” status.  And I can sort socks while listening to Little Brother read, or watching a cooking show.

Wow, they’re kind of expensive, but cute!  We do this with safety pins.  When any of us put a pair of socks on, we unpin our pinned and paired socks, put the pin inside one of them (so that you can’t see it, well not very well anyway) and we’re good to go.  Then, before we throw said socks down the laundry chute, we repin them.  Yes, sometimes they forget.  Yes, sometimes the pins make a little hole in the sock (but not very often).  Yes, the littler guys need help with theirs.  It does cut down a LOT on my sock pairing, though.  Really, I thought that sock pairing was becoming practically my full time job until I started pinning them.  God bless!

So you are still sorting socks, just before instead of after.  I know, it’s harder after, but I’m just sayin’.

I’m still dreaming for the day when they make socks with those little strings on them like mittens.  Ok, so they’d look funny with shorts, but who wears socks with shorts, anyway?

But it’s not at all the same thing when I do it before!

Maybe you all are luckier than I am, or maybe you have your families trained better, but in our house, more often than not, I am the person who puts the socks in the laundry. I find many a pair in the boys room at the end of the day and here and there throughout the house. This way, I just add the clips before putting them in the hamper—which I something I was already doing anyway ... lots easier than picking through giant piles of clean laundry for one stray sock!

But. I am working on having the kids bring their own socks to the hamper and clip them before putting them in. It’s a learning process ...

I remember my mom and her friends talking about doing the same thing, but with clothes pin.

These little gadgets look like they might solve half of my sock sorting issues. Like you, I find socks everywhere - where ever they were taken off really - the mud room, the family room,next to the trampoline, on the deck,in a closet on the floor right next to the laundry hamper…...etc.  I could put the sock cop on those ones and celebrate. I’d probably just have to walk around all day with the cops in my pocket.  There would still be the other socks that actually make it into the hamper by some miraculous act that would need to be matched after washing, but hey, cutting the job in half sounds good to me!

Thanks, Martha, I mean Danielle, for finding another gadget that can help tame the laundry beast!

We used the netted laundry bags.  Each person had one, with their name on it, with their laundry basket.  The system was they put their clothes in the basket and the socks in the bag.  Then I’d zip it up and wash them, dry them and return them.  I worked real well.  Now most of them do their own laundry.

I bought a couple of sets of this sort of thing years ago, my mother in law ,bless her in charge while i was in hospital and a very efficent house keeper thought they were rubbish and threw them away!

I LOVE this idea!

I would rather sort clean socks than dirty socks.  Besides it’s a good reading readiness activity for little ones to sort socks.

I laughed out loud when I read Matildas post-I thought my mom and I were the only ones that watched P and P over and over again!  I got her hooked on the A and E version with Colin Firth when she was in AZ for knee surgery and watched it on her portable player.  My oldest son, who is 15 and handicapped, loves to watch it with her and references it a lot in daily conversation!  I try to match socks as quickly as possible, but it doesn’t always work out, but now I have an alternative-watching Pride and Predjudice while matching!

I must admit, I only sort by color.  I buy the Hanes socks with size coded color stitching on the toes.  Whatever comes out of the dryer, an odd or even number,  gets tossed on the matching sized person’s pile! It’s simple enough to make it a little person’s job.

Incidentally, we all fold together and sing (tune: Turkey in the Straw):
“We’re tired of folding laundry and we’re sick of sorting socks!” (repeat until done with laundry)

Believe it or not…I never match the socks up.  I buy one brand for my son, another brand for my husband.  And my four daughters either have their own size or their own separate brand.  I get bags of the same socks and then sorting is limited to looking at the brand.  And since each has their own…there is no need to match up.  The older ones just put them in their sock drawer and take out a couple in the morning.  (They all look the same anyways.  smile)

Well it sounds good but I do not see it working for my family I am not that good at picking up the kids rooms after them. I make it their job to keep their rooms clean. With 10 kids 9 living with me 7 under the age of 10years I expect them to keep up their rooms and throw their laundry down the hamper. Which means that matching socks end up one in drawer one in laundry, one behind the bed and one in laundry. I realized this recently when we redid the rooms. Lots of onsies socks behind the bed. And a lot of onsie dirty socks in the drawers. I find it hard to keep up with all the kids messes run a house, homeschool, and help run a family buisness so we can provide for the kids.

I don’t know… Socks don’t bother me.. but, maybe if I win a set and use them (read get used to using them) it will be like when you finally take an aspirin for that dull achy headache you’ve had for days and the pain finally goes away….ahhhhhh

These sound good to me I have used a simlar product for years.  count me in.