I've just spent £200 on socks

[okydokethen]

Feeling guilty but I am so sick of matching up socks which are all quite similar but not a match. I swear as a family we have vast amounts of socks and yet never enough, cold house means we often wear two pairs each and kids have clean ones for bed/different ones for sports. I have a basket mountain of mismatched socks and I can't remember when I had new ones.

So, I've bought the four of us 20 pairs each in a different pattern/style and hope this is going to make my sock matching life easier!

Ps wanted to add clean undies daily, in case you thought I only changed them alternate days!

Because even though the socks might look clean if they have been worn all day they are not. Taking any dust etc into the bed. So apart from comfort why do we change into pj's for bed and not leave clothes on? To add we don't reuse towels after bath or shower ful clean clothes every day and clean night clothes every night. Bad for the environment I have already been told.🙄

They are excellent. Suggest you try with the hot water bottle

Socks and a hot water bottle <<faints>>
I like my bed and bedroom to be ice cold.
I love getting into a nice cold bed then wiggling my naked feet until it warms up. Delicious.

Very bad for the environment....and for your immune system. A bit of muck helps build your resistance to germs.

For most of the day, your feet are inside shoes so no dirt there. If your shoes are off at home, if you're as clean as you say they are the socks won't be dirty.

IF I was going to have clean socks in bed, I'd wear them again the next day.

And the reason I wear a nighty is because it's more comfortable to sleep in than day clothes. A bra and a pair of jeans aren't comfortable enough to sleep in in particular.

I do actually do this with my DS(9) and his school clothes as he struggles with Executive functioning. It works well (we are just transitioning to him putting the piles together) and it saves at least 15 minutes of nagging and being paralysed by choice in the mornings- so he just gets ready.

And I wouldn't wash a nighty or a towel after each wash. Very very wasteful and expensive. I'd wash them every 3 uses on average. I rarely get ill and when I do, it's mild and clears up within days. I've just had a cold.....3 days of sneezing and a sore throat/dry cough. Dealt with by paracetamol and linctus and it's on its way out already. Shock horror I have a dog. She often joins us in bed and gives us doggy kisses. Am I bovvered? No, it's another thing improving my immunity. I'm 58 and not dead yet.

Because even though the socks might look clean if they have been worn all day they are not. Taking any dust etc into the bed

I do get what you mean because to me socks feel used once I've worn them in my shoes, whether that's all day or a ten minute walk. I take them off as soon as I get in. I will put them back on if I go out again but it feels like I'm putting on old socks.
When you really think about it though this is such a weird concept. At what point do the socks really become not clean enough to wear?
Say you usually go to bed at 10 and have a late night and go to bed at midnight are you wearing dirty socks for two hours?

Beds are generally pretty dusty anyway, we lie in them all night shedding skin plus there's all the fluff from clothes and towels floating about the average bedroom.

I’ve recently done the same thing. I have around 20 pairs of white Nike socks, which are all the same. Plus a few pairs of plain black Nike socks.

Then around several pairs of fluffy socks for around the house.

Cheap materials make you sweat that’s why they’re “warm”. Mud from a field is probably more hygienic than sweat

As I said in another reply, sometimes he doesn't like my choice and picks something different.

No I don't buy him clothes

This thread is eye-opening (and I'm only on page 1!!)

No you don't wear the your day socks to bed at nighttime and no you don't wear your clean nighttime socks the next day.

You have dedicated nighttime and daytime socks.

(Winter only obvs!)

As for laying out the weeks clothes, I thought I was winning at life managing to have clean and ironed uniforms for x5 days (and x3 DC). But the clothes all live in their respective drawers or wardrobes until they are used.

Lay it out… where? Kind of defeats the purpose of a wardrobe, having 7 full outfits per person laying about randomly.
Why can’t they decide for themselves what they want to wear on a daily basis like the rest of humanity?!

We had the opposite problem - kids refusing to wear socks that had the wrong day of the week on them when the right day socks were in the wash. Maybe we should swap kids for more harmonius households 🤣

Sounds great! I recently bought 24 grey face cloths for £18 and threw away all the old ones. Going to do the same with tea towels too.

Why? Is it a law or something? Of course I don't, don't be ridiculous. If I want to wear socks to bed, I'm not going to waste a clean pair.

I'm 58, I've got this far without someone telling me my feet stink because I've worn the same pair of socks overnight. Why should they? My feet will be washed in the morning and I will have clean socks on!

Some people are so judgmental about what is actually an acceptable level of hygiene!!!!

Came here to say - odd socks for the win!!!

My best tip with socks is to buy them all the same (black) so any one sock matches with another. So much quicker.

I'm with you on all of this, and it's interesting to me that you've given your age here. I'm wondering whether age is actually a factor in the long standing hygiene arguments on here, whether those who are obsessive on 2 showers a day and washing every item after it's been touched tend to be the younger posters. I'm a similar age to you .

Let me guess, you're the 'squeezed middle'?

Op I bought 10 pairs of socks myself today. I have thrown away any socks with holes and left behinds are just meh. I have on my third pair of socks for today…one pair this morning one pair for work and now clean “to bed but not in bed” socks. And they are all pretty and not black. And I too always coordinate DH shirt/ tie/ socks for the upcoming week. He can get by if I don’t but pairs up some odd combinations of short and tie and I don’t like it.

It sounds a lot but it's many pairs. I had to make an unplanned sock purchase last week because I was visiting a city for a day out and in my rush to catch a train I'd not noticed that the elastic had gone in my socks and one had 'gone to sleep' (how well known is that as a saying for when your socks fall down by themselves?).

As I knew I would be walking around all day I popped into Next that happened to be there to buy new socks, which were £12 for a 4 pack.

These weren't the cheapest they had, but nor the most expensive but they were nearly as much as the OPs Nike socks and more than twice her other ones.

Of interest to the thread, they've got little cat motifs on the side (they also had dogs and others) which would help with identifying people's socks in the household but then a dilemma about whether you'd bother matching the different cat motifs when pairing.

Yes, I always wonder what has shifted between older and younger people.

As well as huge increases in hygiene, it also extends to food safety.

When did people start to believe that food turned into poison at midnight on the use by date or that butter needs to be kept in the fridge?

Sounds like me. I have a carrier bag full of mismatches.
Socks are for keeping your feet cosy and comfortable.
Who cares what they look like ? No one sees them anyway.

Yeah we had one bath a week when I was a kid. And many houses had the loo separate from the bathroom with no sink so if someone was in the bath you can't wash your hands. We often wore clothes several times before they were washed, except knickers and socks. Unless very muddy it was up to you if you took your shoes off inside.

I'm not advocating we go back to those days but that's how we were raised.

I do wonder if covid had an impact. We never (and I still never have!) disinfected our shopping as we unpacked or quarantined Amazon parcels. Do people still do that? The only habit I have from those days (in fact it was pre Covid) is always having hand gel on me, but that's because of my dog. I use it on my hands after picking up her poo on a walk.