Sock Strategies

As usual I've been avoiding the laundry room and sure enough when Monday morning came, we had a full-blown sock crisis on our hands.

Little girls who like to match do not like to go to school with mis-matched socks.  I tried to reassure "miss matchy" that if she kept her shoes on the whole day nobody at school would know one said "Monday" and one said "Saturday" but this didn't seem to alleviate her sock stress.  When I tried to optimistically point out they were both in shades of purple, I was met with a deep scowl.

Who puts days of the week on socks anyway?  These are contraband socks and will most certainly be confiscated during the next laundry cycle.  I know I didn't buy these, and if I didn't, who the heck did?  That's a weird gift to give a kid.  Can you imagine?

"Here kid, I bought you some socks."

It sounds like something a grandmother would do.  I won't name names, but there are two grammas which fall suspiciously into the devious crime category of "fancy name-of-the-week sock smuggler".

To minimize sock stress, my strategy has always been to buy the same socks for everyone except for me; SOLID WHITE.  This way, in the likely event I've avoided doing the laundry, people in the house will always manage to find a quasi-match.  In a pinch, they can wear one big dad's sock and one little sister's sock and, "voila!" they appear to the casual observer as if they match!  One may feel way too big, and one waaaay too small, but nobody at school will ever know!  (Our dirty little family secret.)  And, since mine are different,  there's the added bonus that I'll know when someone in the house has stolen mine.  I know, you may find this both an underhanded and selfish Sock Strategy, but I call it street smarts. 

This is also why I'd never buy my kids the underwear that says the days of the week either.  Somebody would find out that at least once a week, it's very likely that one of my kids would manage to slip through the system and go to school with underwear that would say "Monday" on both Monday AND Tuesday.  Heaven knows we've got enough trouble with socks, we certainly don't need underwear trouble too.