The Bane
Do you want to know the biggest problem with having a larger-than-average family? The one thing that makes you wish you’d stopped at one child? The most frustrating issue in today’s family-with-five-or-so-kids?
You do?
Well, I can tell you. It’s socks.
In this house anyway - obviously I can’t speak for all families with five-or-so kids.
For years we’ve had a box in the bottom of the linen closet, into which all socks and underwear have been tossed after they were laundered. When the boys were younger, once every week or two we’d sit on their bedroom floor and sort through it, pairing them and putting them in piles according to who owned them. That worked well when a) I was the one who decided which socks to buy and b) there weren’t five pairs of feet involved. For the last couple of years, we’ve just used the box, with no sorting: when a child needed a pair of socks, he would go and find a pair. Except that as often as not, said child would complain that he wasn’t able to find a pair that fit. Quite how that could be the case when there are 72,406 socks in there, I don’t know, but that’s what they said.
Last weekend, as part of the Big Clear-and-Clean Project, we went through the box. It took four of us sixteen hours.
Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. It was a pain in the neck anyway. The all-in-one-box system clearly isn’t working anymore, so it’s been abandoned - in fact I’ve removed not just the box but the space on the floor of the linen closet where it used to sit. The upstairs vacuum cleaner is there now. (Yes, I have an upstairs vacuum cleaner and a downstairs one. Henry for upstairs, smaller Henry - known here as Henrietta, though I see there’s now an actual vac called that - upstairs. The downstairs one gets used every day, and having another upstairs means it’s easier to vacuum upstairs, so it gets done more frequently. Plus I got the second one off freecycle.)
Anyway, socks. Apart from the pairs of socks which have been given to various children to put in their sock-drawers, I have a big bag full of socks which don’t appear to have a match. I also have a box full of socks which have been matched, but which nobody admits to owning. Most of these are black, grey, or dark blue.
I remember reading advice from someone a few years ago who said that she’d bought a bunch of identical socks, all the same size, colour and design, which fit all of her children - the point of this was to eliminate any necessity for matching up pairs of socks, and the those-are-mine/yours-no-they’re-nots. Obviously she didn’t have children who were both twelve and two years old. In fact of all my children, the only ones who could actually wear the same socks would be George and Freddy.
Last year, I tried to buy them all socks which would make it very clear who owned what. The idea was that all the socks belonging to one child would be the same colour - or at least have an easily-distinguishable design, such as black-with-coloured-heels. I had no idea how difficult this would be; they don’t seem to make multi-packs of socks in one colour. You have to buy a pack with one pale blue, one dark blue, one pale grey, one dark grey and one black. And if you buy that for one child, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for maneouvre when it comes to choosing colours for the others.
I am still looking for ways to manage the socks - and the laundry in general, really. Googling these issues mostly produced suggestions like “store them in drawers in the laundry room” - which would be fine, except that my laundry/utility area is in the garage, so they’d be cold. (I know someone who keeps all her kids’ clothes in the laundry room, and makes them get dressed in there. If I had a heated room, I’d do that too. She also has a laundry chute. It’s almost sad how jealous I am.)
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My mom used to colour coordinate my brothers socks. Each boy (3 boys of similar ages) was given a certain colour and she marked all their socks accordingly. When she bought a new pack of socks, no matter what design they had, she sewed a bit of cotton into the toe area. This even worked with the sport socks as we just matched them per the cotton she used. So they could all have a variety, and even the same design, but we could tell who’s was who’s. It was a bit of work to begin with for her, but made sorting it out easier for all involved!
Your mother obviously didn’t harbour the feelings that I do about needles and threads
Laundry chute?! didn’t think they still existed. I wish I even had a working washing machine at the moment
I have certainly given up knowing whose socks are whose even between my girls, and there are only two of them, so I can imagine it being awful with all your boys!
Hey ho though, if that’s the worst downside to a large family it’s not too bad really, is it?
How’s your car, btw, talking of things that are not-yet-fixed?
Car is fixed - woohoo!
I went through a phase of Violet having knee-length socks and Gwenny having ankle length. But can’t be bothered any more. Ours are fairly easy though - Violet’s are the pinky girly ones, Gwenny’s are anything blue/black/more interesting
Ernest only ever wears socks for BB, so he has a few pairs of dark ones which are simple enough to pull out, and Buttercup’s are the small ones.
I reckon your best bet is the different colours idea, if you can source them!
Hurray, we got the socks post!
I don’t know how we manage it here really, it just happens. If I was forced to analyse our socks situation it’d go like this: Ali and I wear the same socks - black or white and short. We don’t care about anything else except that we have a clean pair when we need them. So he pinches mine and I pinch his. Zara is the same to some extent, but she also has fancy ones. They just get thrown into her room with her other washed clothes for her to sort out. Lyddie and Grace each have their own - they get put away when I do it and I don’t mind doing it. There’s just a basket of stuff to put away every day and it feels ok to do it - I get my bedroom table back when it’s done, and that’s a Good Thing. Tom never changes his socks!
He’s totally disgusting, from a socks POV. Ew.
I’d hate the laundry chutes and getting kids dressed in the laundry idea tbh. Far too regimented for my liking.
I don’t actually think the laundry chute is a prerequisite for the kids getting dressed in the utility room. But actually I like both ideas - and I suspect my kids would probably be keen too, because it would save all that moving laundry around the house and putting it away business. Plus they’d have more space in their rooms if their clothes weren’t stored there. And it’s not like they couldn’t collect what they wanted to wear from the utility room and get dressed in it somewhere else. It didn’t strike me as regimented at all - just organised.
Yes ok, I could go for it from that POV
pleased you have the car back - what a relief.
we managed to solve the blog ring thing :
(the previous blog ring thing didn’t work.) Hope you don’t mind us popping in to let you know we’ve now succeeded in making an easy to use blog ring where our young people of any age can keep in touch with each other.
Our Space Blogring
We will need a permission email from a parent for anyone who is under the age of 14. This Blogring will not be advertised outside of our blogging community.
Only Lana and dawniy can add blogs to this ring and will be checking our younger people are safe.
Please visit us at http://ourspaceblogring.blogspot.com for details of how to join and our email address.
Thank you
Oh I’d love a laundry chute, or a laundry room upstairs, (friend of a friend has done this, I think it makes sense). No answers on the sock problem.
I used to babysit for someone who had their washer and dryer upstairs; I thought it was very sensible too. Wouldn’t like to deal with it if the washer leaked though
Hopefully this will not go in the spam box
I think different colurs is the best bet for you .
It went into moderation, but I think this is the first time you’ve commented? - which would mean it’s moderated automatically. You avoided the spam box though
Because of the colour of sock issue (bearing in mind that all 3 of my boys wear vaguely similar sizes but refuse to wear socks unless they come from their own sock drawer) what I do is they each have different patterns/pictures. The lot I bought a couple of years ago were motorbikes for DS1, cars for DS2 and helicopters/aeroplanes for DS3. That worked very well, I still had loads of odd ones but at least I knew whose was whose! The ones I have just bought, DS1 has grey & white camouflage, DS2 has bart simpson and DS3 has power rangers, all bulk bought from Ebay. Unfortunately for me it doesn’t help with school socks, those I just make 3 similar sized piles of grey and if they are slightly too small or large - well no-one has complained yet!
You, my girl, are a genius. I never thought of sorting them by character. Off to ebay now!
I’ve tried for years to work out the sock issue, even more we got to number 5! I think if they weren’t all boys it might have been easier… even I could work out whose were the pink ballerina socks then ;o)
I’ve tried to buy each boy a different colour - thought like you say, that’s nearly impossible - but then (and this is the tough bit) I FORGOT WHO IS WHICH COLOUR!
So, somehow, mysteriously, all the socks end up in William’s drawer, and everyone else runs out!
Oh yes, and we’ve got an upstairs Henry and a downstairs unnamed hoover!
We have 3 of the cheap blue boxes (now red) from ikea, one for dh and I, one for the big 2 girls and one for the smaller 2. They get (in theory, or rather when I’m doing it or telling one of the kids to do it) sorted from the line/horse/dryer into the appropriate box and paired if possible on the way. Then (also in theory) they get taken upstairs and put away. Underwear goes in the boxes, and clothes go in big blue ikea bags on the same lines except that it’s mine, dh’s and dd4’s cos her clothes live in our room.
But when dh deals with dry clean clothes he dumps them all in a heap together on top of the hifi, so it all falls to pieces.
mutter mutter mutter about people who have Ikea available…
lol!