21 January 2013

Daily Challenge - Day 9

Alright, I told y'all that today would be an odd one for the challenge.  I challenged myself to

Match Up Single Socks.

What a topic to write about, right?  Well, I also promised pictures, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about my process of matching up socks.  (I guarantee, this will probably be the most boring post you'll read all year!)

When I do laundry, I make sure to match all the socks that I can.  But due to both my husband and my kids having a tendency to take their socks off anywhere and leave them, I always end up with a bunch of mismatched socks.  They go into a bag and usually wait there for years and years until I force myself to try to match them up.  Ok, not really years and years, but several months at least.

Today was a great day for me to tackle this chore.  I have a clean bedroom floor, several episodes of NCIS that I haven't watched yet, and the time to work on it.  I started with my two (yes, two) bags of mismatched socks.

Those sheets that come in bags?  The bags are excellent for this job!

At least they weren't lying all over the place.  No, that came about a minute later when I dumped them in the middle of my floor.

Climbing to the top of Mount Sockmore!

I settled on the floor, turned on an episode of NCIS.  Requiem, which I'd seen the beginning of last night, but it was too late to watch it all.  So absolutely perfect for sorting socks.

I usually sort my socks into three piles - pure white, pure black, and colored or character socks.  I find it easier, especially when I have as many socks as this, to find matches.  And I can do it pretty much automatically while being engrossed in what Gibbs is up to now.

I got my socks sorted into their piles and, just as I was about to take the picture, a visitor decided to stop by.

Lemon wanted to get into the action.

Yep, my cat decided it had been too long since I'd last taken a picture of him, so it was going to happen now, darn it all!  I'm just glad he didn't start playing with the socks.

Now, a better picture of my three piles:

To each his own.

I always start sorting the character or colored socks first.  It's so much easier to spot matches that way.  So I moved the other two piles over to the side and started laying socks on the floor, on my legs, anywhere I could still reach them while seeing them.

Can you guess what my kids have the most of?

I managed to find matches for most of the socks, but I still had a handful that were without their match.  I usually just set those to the side for the moment, because I've been known to sort socks into the wrong piles.  With both the white and the black socks, I separate them again into piles of Amber's, Rich's and the Boys'.  The only problem with that is Teddy's feet are getting bigger and sometimes I can't tell the difference between his socks and mine.  There's enough difference that they're just a touch small on me if they belong to him, and just a touch big on him if they belong to me.  And it's so hard to tell by sight!

Anyway, I managed to match the last sock with about 10 minutes left of NCIS to go.    There were more socks than I'd hoped in the unmatched pile, but I should have expected it.  The last time I matched up the socks, I threw away all the unmatched ones.  My family doesn't lack for socks.  I decided to do the same here, but for two socks that I knew had been missed this round of laundry.

Begone, unmatched socks, out of my sight!

The only thing left for me to do was put away all the nice, clean, matched socks into everyone's drawers.

No one better complain, "I can't find any socks!"

So all in all, I've had a pretty successful morning.  Along with the sock matching, I did bathroom cleaning, a load of laundry and healthy eating.  I certainly can't complain about that!

So what's on the schedule for tomorrow's challenge?

Write About What Makes You Strong

See you back here tomorrow!