Sock wars

"Mom, why are there socks in the deep freeze?"

"Not now, Dear.  I have company."

Too late.  My poor guest was already looking at me as if I had lost my marbles.  Maybe I had.  Maybe I have.

Truth is, I hate sorting socks.  It probably wouldn't be so bad if it was just the amount of socks for two, maybe three, even four, family members.  It also wouldn't be so bad if each sock had a mate in the laundry basket.  But when you have 9 people and approximately 3 days worth of socks for each laundry day, that's a lot of socks.  Factor in the runaway sock principle and you're looking at a lot of socks.  And a lot of frustration.

Trying to make my life easier, I bought everyone their own, color coded and labeled Sock Sac.  I love them and they work great.  If you use them.  Yes, it's really just a variation on the old lingerie bag but they last much longer (I know, we tried lingerie bags first) and seems more gender neutral.  But the older boys won't use them because they don't like the name.  Okay.  I can accept that.  Call it what you want, but use it.  So the deal is, if you use the [Insert Name Here], then all of your socks will stay together, will be easy to sort and therefore will be sorted by me, and finally, will be returned to you.  Don't use the [Call It What You Will], and your socks will not be sorted and will not be returned to you.

All of the socks not placed in the [To Be Named Product] used to be placed in an extra laundry hamper.  Til I found that the kids would just go in there every morning, grab any two socks, and wear them, not caring if they were their own (our socks are labeled with first initial) or if they matched.  This caused multiple problems, including scuffles with siblings who would be upset to find their initials on the bottoms of someone else's feet.  And then the special sock laundry hamper broke.  Drastic measures needed to be taken.

So I put the socks in the deep freeze which is in the laundry room.  Just dumped the socks from the broken hamper right into one of the side baskets.

This didn't seem to bother the kids, though.  It did take them a while to find the socks, hence the announcement while I had company.  Once they found them, they would just go into the freezer each morning to pull out a pair of cold socks.  They seemed to think that cold socks were a minor inconvenience compared to having to take their socks off and place them in a [Haven't Found an Acceptable Name for it Yet].

Obviously my measures were not drastic enough.  So I started taking the wet socks out of the washer and putting them into the freezer before they went through the dryer.  Now grabbing your socks from the freezer in the morning gives new meaning to the term "cold feet."

Funny, more of my children are beginning to use the [Glorified Lingerie Bag Without a Name] now.  It's really fairly simple, folks.  Just find a method which helps them see things your way.  I will win the sock war.