This post is *NOT* about my children

PCSguy is concerned. He feels that I spend too much time blogging about my children and that I will lose readers unless I expand topically.

So today I will post about my lonely sock basket. You can thank him yourself later.

As you can see, basket is now a subjective term.

Every organization expert has a way of dealing with this age-old problem. The worst one I ever saw was a clothesline behind the dryer with single socks clipped to it for easy reference. That's so mean. All the missing socks are probably hiding under the dryer already and then they see their mate just hanging there, mere inches beyond their grasp. Plus I'd need like 3 miles worth of clothesline.

My father-in-law fancied himself to be a bit of an inventor. (1) He created a special device to keep socks together. It looked like this :

only his was less blurry

He built it from scratch in his workroom. Don't get me wrong, I loved my father-in-law very much but still, I dread the day PCSguy retires.

I may pile all the bills in small stacks throughout the house, nowhere near the checkbook or stamps. But for socks, I have a system. I'm not going to say it's the highlight of my month but that's just because Nordstrom has sales in June, July and November.

Once a month I empty out all the socks. I always start with the black and blue ones.

sock foreplay

Honestly, I'm not truly the anal type. My kids dress themselves and a lot of times, yes, they look like orphans. I don't have control issues. Except about socks. Rule number one: Once placed in the lonely sock basket, a resident cannot be released until the exact match is found. It's like the Hotel California for socks.

Now I may not be able to identify my children by name on the first try, and there's no chance I could pull out a fact like how old they were when they lost their first tooth. But I can tell you to the minute how long each sock has been in that box and the circumstances surrounding its arrival. It's all about priorities people.

Usually there are more red socks. I have a bad feeling about this.

See the teeny yellow cashmere sock all the way on the bottom right? I'd like you to meet LSB's longest resident. These socks were a baby gift from a friend of my mom's when Noa was born. The sock made it's grand debut in the LSB (2) back in September of 2000 after only one wearing. I'm 99% sure that it fell off Noa's foot at the pediatrician's office. Even if the mate did miraculously appear, there is no foot small enough in our house to ever wear this sock again. (3) Totally immaterial. Can you imagine how I'd feel if after holding on to this sock for EIGHT (4) years, I threw it away and the next day the mate showed up. Seriously? You think I'd laugh and write all about irony? Are you new here? Is this sock taking up enough real estate that it's worth that risk? No, I didn't think so. Moving on.

Next comes white with some kind of design:

So close

I can hear you, Elizabeth in Maryland, wondering out loud why I can't just pair up those 2 orange champion socks in the top row together. You think that because they'll be unnoticeable under my sneakers that I could just loosen up a little. You could not be more wrong. Not even if you were the Queen of Wrongville.

Finally we're here. The grand finale. The white socks:

By this point I'm practically orgasmic

These guys are tricky. A true white sock match is almost unheard of. By now I notice nobody even considering suggesting the two on the bottom left look sort-of the same. And sure enough, no match today. However my mission is complete. All 59 single socks go back in the box until next month. I can go to bed feeling I accomplished something. (5)



1) We spent many hours discussing if I could help him get a patent on his "pants stretcher."
2) At the time a much smaller box. There are no lonely socks from before 2000 because before then I had a life.
3) Like I said, you can checkout anytime you want, but you can never leave.
4) At first I said seven years, like the blogger version of writing 2007 on a check, if I could find my checkbook.
5) Except it's only 3:24 so I can't really go to bed for like 4 more hours.