Matching Socks

Socks are funny things. They're so essential (well they used to be before flip flops became all the rage) yet so small and well-- separate. Here in lies the problem!

Trying to keep socks matched in a big family is nearly impossible. I'm not saying it's easier in a smaller family, but I have to use what I know as a reference. Also, I grew up an only child with my mom and we always knew whose socks were whose. Dealing with army sized proportions for anything was a complete shock to my system and I had no idea what I was in for when it came to the socks!

I remember when my children were all little, back in the old days when I did ALL of the laundry in the house for five children, wearing matching socks was an amazing accomplishment for anyone in the household to achieve. It would start off with me buying a nice full pretty set of socks for each child to put in their dresser drawer and then...they'd wear them. Now granted, there was always a honeymoon period where I worked hard to match the socks right out of the dryer. But after a couple of washes it was just a confusing nightmare. Which sock matched which? I was dealing with minuscule size differences and 4 girls! Even during the honeymoon period, after the first wash, I never matched as many pairs as I bought. We'd go from 6 pairs to at most 5 pairs right off the bat.

It's not that I didn't try to troubleshoot the situation. I did devise different methods to increase the chance of the children having matching socks. I bought color coded socks thinking they couldn't get mixed up with the other children's socks because I would know their colors. Unfortunately, after the first sock was lost the other one that matched it in color was never worn again. Then it occurred to me that buying socks that were ALL the SAME color might actually be the answer. That way, anyone's sock could go with anyone else's! The perfect solution I thought! It didn't work. Each child wore different sized socks. I had masses of white socks, all in different sizes but the size differences weren't profound enough. The same color socks just created an even bigger problem than before. My next thought was to buy each of the children a mesh bag to put their socks in and they could get washed in the bag and the bag handed back to the appropriate child. Ingenious right? Well, do you know how much those bags cost? I never bought them. I think someone should invent a special magnet that gets embedded in the sock which draws only its true match to its side.

Anyway, as time went by, I began to lower my standards for the children's attire when they left the house. I settled for simply having the children in socks period. They didn't necessarily have to match I thought to myself. After awhile, wearing matching shoes was all that I required. I mean, why did socks have to be the end all to everything? Finally, I started throwing all of the socks in a laundry basket. All the socks in the house went in the basket and the children had to fend for themselves if they needed socks. Every morning they'd dig through the "sock basket" and decide what "matched." It wasn't a pretty picture. A child's idea of matching and an adult's idea of matching are two different things. Their socks rarely matched.

Then, the unthinkable happened. One of my children became old enough to wash her own clothes. I think she did it just because of this very problem. She wanted to keep track of her socks. She wanted to know that when her socks went to the wash, she would get them back. It provided a form of security for her. So, out of survival, she began keeping her dirty clothes in her own room and washing them herself and protectively bringing them from the dryer directly to her bed. No one else got her socks anymore. I won't say that the washing machine or the bed never confiscated one of her socks, but her chances of having matching socks greatly increased!

During this same period of time, my middle daughter, Emily, developed an all out phobia for putting any of her clothes in the wash because it took so long to get the laundry done. She just simply wouldn't wash them at all. She'd wear them, take them off, fold them and put them back in her drawer--socks and underwear included. One day I noticed a bad smell in her room and followed it to her dresser. It was then that I discovered her drawers full of dirty, smelly clothes, socks and underwear!

"Emily!" I said. "You're clothes stink! They need to go in the laundry! "

"Those are mine!" she said adamantly as she snatched them from my arms.

I told her that we had to wash them, but she began to cry and sob and repeat that the clothes were hers and she wanted them back. I promised she would get them back but this went on for a few years. I had to sneak in her room and steal her clothes to the laundry and try to get them back in her drawers before she noticed they were gone. Sometimes she would find them missing from her drawers and come and steal them back from the dirty laundry. When I'd go to do the wash I'd notice her clothes were gone. It was an ongoing battle. One Christmas when she was looking in the Sears wishbook she saw towels. She pointed to them and said,

"I want those for Christmas."

I guess I didn't get the towels washed quick enough for her either. Today, she still won't put her clothes in the laundry, but she will let me wash them and trusts that I'll give them back. She's come a long way.

Now-a-days the socks leave trails around the house of the children who have gone before them. When my 19 year old son left home to go to college in August, 2008, the one thing I thought I wouldn't miss were his socks that were always left on the couch or floor where he last lay before he went to bed the night before.

"These socks!" I'd exclaim. And, "COY! You're socks are here again!" as I dangled them in the air and scowled at him.

Exasperated, I'd set them on the stairs (the place I put things that I want the children to take to their rooms). Then, a week later, the socks were still there, where I had hopefully placed them, except now there were several other socks which had joined them and formed a small mountain. No! I definitely would not miss his sock messes!

Then, he left. For weeks after, I kept finding his socks in odd places.

It went kind of like this. After he left, there was still a mess in his room. He had left a huge pile of socks that he didn't know what to do with....all mismatched of course-- ones that he saw as useless. Well, I take that back, there were some matching ones I'm ashamed to say, so I called him to say that he had left some perfectly good socks at the house. He had acquired my frustration for the topic and told me he didn't want them. Just the sight of the pile probably brought back bad memories of searching for his socks in the sock bin for all those years. So, I gathered them all up and took them to the garbage (yes, I threw away perfectly good socks). There! Coy's socks were gone. It seemed a waste, but better they go than cause clutter around the house. There was no one else to wear socks that fit a boy's size 11 and very few matching ones anyway.

Then, the haunting began. The first sock I found after the purging was in the couch. I began to cry at the sight of it. Not because his socks were still popping up, but because that single sock reminded me of all of the frustration I had hurled at him, because it reminded me of the little son that was now grown and gone, because it reminded me that now I wished he was here.

While it may seem a bit cliché, I think I better enjoy the mess while I have it. Someday, the only socks I will have to look after will be my own. Although, my son has moved home and I'm back to putting his socks on the stairs for him to take to his room. Who knows, maybe in the future socks will become a thing of the past and this blog will become like an artifact of the old days when we actually wore socks?

Here's to the messes the kids make and to the effort of taking care of them. Just like people say we need to learn to love our bodies with all of their flaws...I'm learning to love the messes my children leave behind--kind of.