How do you sort out socks in your household?

[cheapskatemum]

I know which are mine, but DH and DSs 1, 2 & 3 all have similarly-sized feet. After washing all the socks I struggle to work out which are whose. I can't spread them all out & say "pick out your own" because DS1 is acquisitive, DH proprietal & DS2 is autistic (& would end up with none). As for DS3, he'd just get bolshy if DS1 got there first. Thank goodness DS4's feet are significantly smaller AS YET! So, how do you manage?

Could you use laundry bags to keep everyones socks separate? put their names on their own bag and have them put the dirty socks into it.
Alternatively. My aunt had 3 daughters and each daughter had their own coloured thread sewn into the inside top of each of their socks. Green, red and yellow.

Butterflymum - I do exactly that! Have you been spying on me? I find the matching sessions strangely therapeutic, how sad is that? Think I'm gonna have to go down the stitching different colours route. It'll be be me doing the sewing tho', these are DSs we're talking about. The little plastic thingies look cute, TeenyTinyTorya, but I think I'd pretty soon lack the urge to use them.

MrsBates, DH would sooner eat dung than wear odd socks! Kids wouldn't mind tho'.

nah im not sure i could stomach matching SWEATY socks together - hate doing it when they are clean!

5 sons, 1 husband, and me.... naughtiest kid of the week gets to pair them! Most of them cringe when i mention the dreaded "sock box".

I too have tried in vain with the colour match option... NO shop in britain ever sells the same colour/pattern twice - and its a job and a half trying to remember which pattern goes with which child!

fri**ing socks. Oh i know who all of them belong to except we always have an entire laundry basket full of half pairs. it drives me mad, where in God's name do they go?

i throw all the coloured stuff into the washing machine in random piles and then sort them as best i can. Some henhang around pairless for w while. If the other one doesn't turn up I wait and wait...
once the pile of odd ones is so big my husband starts mocking me I hide them behind the shoes in one of the wardrobes. I have an everest of odd socks. one day it will spill or one day i will no lonegr be able to shut the door.

i pay my children to do it

Agree about communal socks . I buy in bulk @ ASDA whwre they have 5 pairs for a £1, and chuck them after a few washes.

I would lou but they are crap at it

Dh and dd1 have those ones with the days of the week on them. They are black but have coloured heels! Makes pairing up easy and fun too. Dd2 has pink socks; I often get ds1 and ds2's socks mixed up but that's mainly because ds2 wears ds1's outgrown socks and I forget . Mine are all bright stripes or handknitted so I know which are mine (ha)

I am going to go with the "one child, one colour" thing in the future I think - very good idea!

miaou I've posted on your sleepsuit thread

Oh x-posted with you kittywise, will reply on that thread though!

I sort them, put them into two big piles of girls/boys, and they come and choose which they think are theirs.

we have had arguements in the past over whose are whose, and a few weeks back we had the biggest row of all.

so I binned ooh, about 10prs!!!

They have now learnt to come and get them properly

Lol! So glad it's not just me & mine who have sock problems!

I have a 3 & 5 yr old both with the same size feet!!! Used to buy character socks for them but they always argued over whose they were and I could never remember so now I just buy random socks and after washing just split the pile in 2.
The different colours is a good idea Im gonna try that!!

I have managed to get the sock situation down to a fine art. There are 6 in our family so:

(a) The second sock are removed from feet they are attached together (no exceptions) although DH still hasnt gotten the hang of it.

(b) They are washed still attached together.

(c) They are dried still attached together either in the tumble drier or if on clothes line they will be taken apart but re-attached before they leave the clothes line.

(d) Everyone in family has own sock and jocks basket so bingo - matching socks all round.

It is about the only thing organised in my house though!

we have a veritable mountain of black socks.
dd1 & dd2 have the same size feet, they both need black socks to wear when wearing trousers to school (the whole of the autumn/winter terms), i wear black socks and have slightly smaller feet but still the same 'sock size'. dp wears black socks and other than his 'next' socks they all seem to shrink to roughly the same size as the socks belonging to dd1,dd2 and me. all black socks. mine however have a decorative top edge to them. i have 5 pairs with decorative tops. why is there only ever 1 sock with a decorative top in there at a time, even though i ALWAYS put my socks in the wash in pairs.... the others' black socks all seem to come out of the wash slightly different shades. i also have 3 pairs with different colour soles. again, there never seem to be a matching pair in the sock box.

i'm not even going to touch on the singular character socks that seem to multiplying - but not cloning as that'd make my life easier. or the white (i mean slightly grey/pink/beige ) ones for PE which all seem to be slightly different.

dd3 is still only little and each of her pairs is different. she has around 15 pairs of socks. it's rare to find a matching pair without a hunt. dd4 is only 7 months and she rarely wears socks as they just fall off. at least that way i'm not losing them in the wash, just in the park, on the drive, in the supermarket....

but in answer to the original question what do we do about socks. the answer is stick them in a large cardboard box and hope that someone occassionally feels brave enough to plunge head first in - with a safety rope of course....

ours is like willself, everyman (or random woman ie me) for themselves in the sock mountain, what i want to know is when the males of the household all wear black/grey is how come we have so many unmatching socks - the bl*y things must breed and mutate.

DD and me wear same size socks so the black ones she needs for school and the ones I wear are shared, she has non-school socks which are obv hers,
ds has grey for school and at the mo only trainer socks for out of school his always seem to be missing.
Dh's socks are summin else his feet stink and his socks are washed balled up together coz I ain't unballing a damp sock,
however we have an odd sock drawer containing socks from when they were babies that I never throw out, have never paired and are useless,as well as other lonely and elderly socks this drawer also contains single gloves a leg warmer and a pair of nappy-knickers I once had to buy Ds from a gap sale during an unfortunate potty-training incident!!

i colour cold them with a few stiches of cotton in the tops when they are new out of the packet. Blue for DH, red for DS.