I’m sure you can all relate to having a basket full of stray socks! Where do the pairs go? They seem to disappear quite frequently in our house. Usually I find socks under the bed, behind the couch, in a toy box, even rolled up in a sweatshirt occasionally! So it’s no surprise with six people in our household the stray sock basket can get quite full.
Instead of doing this every six months or so, I should make more of an effort to do this monthly. Since it was on my decluttering list, I went ahead and sorted the socks. I had a huge basket full of strays!
I started with sorting by color, black socks, white socks, colored socks, fuzzy socks. Then I tried to sort by person – moms, dads, boys, girls, etc. Then I started matching up. It’s kind of like memory match in a way! Sofia always likes to help me with this game! :)
The sorting game:
As I was sorting, I also made a pile of socks that should be trashed. Either because they are too small, have holes, or oops got washed with the jeans! There were also a few pairs that I knew had been in the random basket for probably a year or more so I put those in the trash pile as well. I’m sure there is something you could do to re-purpose socks but I just wanted them out of my house at this point.
TRASH Socks:
I found quite a few matches and promptly put away in the applicable drawers. There is still quite a few randoms in the basket but I’ve reduced it quite a bit. I’m guessing once I start decluttering the kids rooms, I’ll find many of these matches!
A basket full of sock matches:
I’ve heard of people only buying the same brand of socks so they don’t have to match up socks like this as often. I’ve tried to buy the same brands but it seems like even if you go back in a couple months, they’ve changed their design or material just enough to notice.
Read more on the Decluttering Your Home: Start Small, Really Small series as well as reading the most recent decluttering posts as part of my Spring Cleaning!