Socks (pt. 2)

[da]

Of 28 respondants in yesterday's sock poll:

13 will toss the holey sock right away (including 5 who toss its mate),
8 will keep wearing it indefinitely,
4 or so will put it somewhere hoping it'll get fixed or used as a rag,
and 3 are darners or have a darning grandma.

Cool.

My unhealthy curiosity about what happens in the privacy my friends' sock drawers is multi-part.

First, I had a theory that lots of people on my friends-list would hang onto the holey sock for various reasons; this was partly validated by 8 wearers, 4 stashers, and 3 darners. 15 in all. I had expected there to be a few darners, and fortunately there were- including fyddlestyx the Darning Queen! ("See that girl, watch that scene...")

Of the remaining 13 people who toss the holey sock, it seems possible as many as 6 or 8 will keep the non-holey sock even if it lacks a mate. This is the other question I was curious about. Against my attempts to buy bulk identical socks, I have a fairly large number of not-quite-matching black socks, which I'll pair that way, and suffer the occasional rolled eyes from my sweetie. I figure it's one of those things we both put up with. ;) But I intentionally didn't ask whether people tossed just the holey one, to see if people would write that in, and they did.

I didn't ask how frequently people have holey socks. I came to the realization recently that I've had a batch of holey socks in my drawer for a really long time. I blame my last pair of boots, which not only gave me blisters on my heel, but wore holes in my socks, always in the same place, at the top of the heel. So I'm due for a holey-sock purge some time soon; which I've been resistant to do since it's probably about a dozen socks to be tossed. (Maybe it's time to make a pillow from them, as dawn_guy suggested?)

Comments

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I might keep the non-holey sock if it had a mate, but I tend not to buy multiple pairs of the same sock.

And yes, I do suffer through your socks not matching, but not much.

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

Dan, put those unpaired socks out of their misery for Daniel!

A related question/poll: what about missing socks (which is much bigger of a problem for me, since I throw out both socks if one has a hole). But, if I finish the laundry and one is missing somehow (where DO they go?) then I put the other in the drawer and it will sometimes sit there for months.

And yet ANOTHER sock poll:
* throw them all into a drawer willy-nilly, unpaired
* throw them all into the drawer willy-nilly, but paired up
* neatly folded in the drawer
* balled
* other

[metalana.livejournal.com]

I used some of my deader socks to stuff a pillow (the turtle with the small head). It turned out a little firmer than stuffed animals or pillows are supposed to be.

[fyddlestyx.livejournal.com]

and then, there are always sock monkeys!

;-)
the dancing, darning queen.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

you know, you just gave me an idea- the back door could possibly use something to block the gap at the bottom... perhaps a sock-snake... hm...

[bats22.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was a bit surprised that I was the only one to response "rag bag"--they're not great rags, but they are useful as bottom-tier ones (e.g., degreasing bike parts). I keep on re-pairing socks, because I usually buy them in large identical batches.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see! Your first mistake is to get black socks then! :-P

I'm often amused by the two crowds when it comes to laundry: some people seem to think that black stuff is easiest, because "it will look clean" and some people seem to think that white stuff is easiest because "you can use aggressive treatments, like hot water and/or bleach" to make it clean. I don't belong to either, I wash almost everything in hot water, no chlorine bleach (but use color-safe bleach when I deem necessary) -- my thinking is that I want stuff to *be* clean, not just *look* clean, and if it takes hot wash to clean the whites, why, it will take hot wash to clean the darks too, altho I do wash whites and darks separately.

In any case, I find it funny that people tend to have whites all the "same color", but the People In Black (tm) crowd amuses me because they tend to wear mismatching blacks -- I dunno why it's perfectly obvious to me and not to other people that there is greenish black (the cheapest, worst looking), reddish black (eh), bluish black (nicer, more expensive) and deep or Amish black, very nice and expensive. So those people are walking on the streets more mismatched than if they wore each piece of garment of a completely different color. I don't mind it, it doesn't affect me until they claim they are better than anyone else and claim to think that everything they are wearing "matches" -- well it "does" in that it's all supposed to be black, but if they mean it's the same black they are full of it.

Anyway, yes, I suppose you probably wear black socks because they are work socks, like most everyone else, but that's my standard rant against black being "safe" -- if one is gonna be picky about clothing, black is far from safe. Then again, the fashion guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy says that if you are gonna wear stuff that doesn't match *exactly* (say blue jeans pants and jacket) to make sure the color tones are sufficiently far apart to make explicit to people you *knew* it and it's ok, that there's nothing worse than things that almost match but don't, which is possibly one of the few things in that show I share the same opinion on, but YMMV. ;-)