Where do all the socks go?

[lostindubai]

Seriously! Anyone else keep losing them? One of mine and one of ds' socks have gone missing over the last few weeks and it's driving me nuts! Could the washing machine be eating them?!

yes

clean out the washing machine pump filter and see if there is shredded sock in it.

They turn into wire coathangers.

I thought everyone knew this?

I currently have approximately 30 buddyless socks. Between me, DP, DS1 and DS2, DSS and DSD and all the coming and going between our house and their other parents houses... I give up. It's literally a carrier back of lost and lonely socks. How this happens baffles me, it really does.

I wish I knew the answer, OP.

I keep a basket of lonely single socks in the airing cupboard.

It makes me very happy on the rare occasions when I manage to reunite one with its partner.

I have no idea where they go

I will be so sad if I find a shredded sock. It had Thomas the Tank Engine on it

Probably made their way to my bucket of odd socks for company.

I want to tell you all a story about the futility of pairing up socks.

DS has a very cavalier attitude to socks, as long as he has a sock on each foot he really doesn't care if they look alike. He goes off to friend's houses, leaves socks behind & randomly collects socks belonging to them. Sometimes I am trying to match up socks that AREN'T EVEN IN THE SAME COUNTRY.

I give socks a time limit, if their partner hasn't shown up within 2 weeks I just get rid. Life is too short.

There is a very small pipe/ hole in washing machine that used water goes through but it is big enough for squished up small socks etc to go through too. I now use a net bag to keep the socks in.

there is a fairy that comes and takes them away. must be as I always find odd socks and loose change in my washing machine.

I checked the filter. It was grim, but there were no socks. (I used a net bag with his smaller socks but thought they'd be safe now as they're a bit bigger.)

I did find my sock hidden behind a radiator where it had fallen while drying. I have checked all radiators. DS sock still missing.

Buddy less socks are needed for sock monkeys, so get creative!

No helpful suggestions but thanks to the thread title I now have Witney belting out 'where do all the socks go?' in my head to the tune of 'where do broken hearts go?'

When the DCs were younger we used to have a 'socks reunited' competition, dumping all the odd socks from a basket onto the floor. They're teenagers now so longer care (I still do it, on my own) ??

Mme thank you SO MUCH for that ear worm!

OP I've only ever lost one sock - it turned up eventually in the corner of a duvet cover. Have you checked there?

Or balled up in the leg of the trousers they were worn with?

Haha whenever I hear that song now I will be reminded of the tragedy of missing socks!

Thank you cupcakes I will check duvet covers. I also have cats so wonder if one of them has ferried the sock off somewhere.

The borrowers are real and use the socks as sleeping bags or at least this is the lie I tell myself and will be telling ds as he gets older lol he's 10 months old and his socks go straight in the laundry basket and I make sure there's a pair before I was them and when I take them out, I put them away as a pair and yet when I go to get them 1 has mysteriously disappeared borrowers are the only explanation

I don't bother with paired socks. It's too much trouble, I just stick the first two i come across on. There is literally no point in pairs. Plus, if one gets a hole in, I'm not chucking out a perfectly good sock just because it's brother died

The only way round this is to buy lots of the same colour socks, not as infuriating if you lose any then

I lifted our 20-year-old landing carpet recently & found a much younger sock underneath it

The only odd sock rule I know is that however long you hang on to one, its mate will turn up within a week of you giving up & chucking it

We ended the lone sock ordeal by buying all black socks. Now I don't even sort cocks anymore I just dump them in the drawer and first caught first used.

It helps that DP and I have roughly the same foot size so share socks.
No kids yet, but plan to do the same, color coded per child

We do the same as Qwebec in my house but the DC are included too. We all have variations on black socks. DH and I have minions and muppets + the odd older pairs of heel and toe/ sole or whatever sock. DS has starwars + his old heel and toe ones. DD has days of the week and coloured socks.
We had a wardrobe crisis recently and DH went out and bought more socks as he was convinced I was slacking in my washing but I kept saying, "Nope, all the socks are through the wash, no darks waiting to be washed." And then I went into DD's (aged 13) bedroom and went ballistic at the washing.
When I had got it all though the machine that evening, I folded the socks the next day and counted 57 pairs of socks, not counting the ones I disposed of due to holes.

I used to wonder where all the socks went. If I ended up with an odd sock when doing the laundry, I put it in a bag in the airing cupboard to wait for the other one to turn up, but it rarely did.

Afetr a few months I had a bag of odd socks, with no hope of reuniting them with their other halves. I mentioned this to dh, who then said that whenever he sorted the laundry he put any odd socks in a bag in our bedroom.

Merging the 2 bags allowed most of our odd socks to be reunited

Trouble with getting eg all black socks is that they're not all the same - fibre, shape, length etc - I don't care about odd coloured socks but they need to feel the same

Whoever invented coloured heel/toe socks should be publicly celebrated