Trouble in the sock pile

So socks. Five people means ten socks a day (if everybody changes them as often as they say they do) which is seventy a week. That's 140 in a fortnight. 300 in a month.

Some people don't find this problematic, because they're organised, diligent, hardworking, and just don't HAVE a big heap of laundry or a special shopping bag for unpaired socks. For the rest of us, this is a problem that we just wade through and hope one day somebody will invent shoes that can be worn without socks that don't stink or give you blisters and that still keep your feet warm enough. Or we'll all evolve a fuzzy layer of fur on our feet that will negate the need altogether.

So, just by chance, I, like many others on the Internet, discovered these:

Some smarty pants stuck poppers on socks and is selling them at about $6 a pair. Naturally, I'm far from willing to pay that price for socks, however handy they are. Especially for five of us.

So instead, I bought some of these:

From this ebay seller. I've bought 50 each of the kids' three colours (all their stuff is colour coded in red, blue, yellow where possible) and 150 in transparent for the grown ups and a pair of the special pliers for attaching them to stuff.

When they arrive, I will begin the task of attaching them to all the paired socks in the house, colour coded according to the owner. The children will then be persuaded to attach their socks together prior to putting them in the laundry. Failure to do this will be easily traced to the owner of the socks due to the colour coded poppers and additional training put in place. When they come out of the washing machine, all paired up and popped together, I'm going to be so happy.

It just occurred to me that a boy popper only attaches to a girl popper, so that that big stack of black socks that need snapping together run the risk of losing their mates and ending up in same sex pairs.

We'll see how this actually goes.