More intrigued about the socks part, how did you solve it? I’ve lost enough to understand that there’s something clearly wrong about the way I deal with them.

I solved the problem by buying one single sort of black socks and one single sort of white socks. No need to pair them: just pink any random of the same color.

It always boggles my mind that losing socks in the laundry is such a common phenomenon. A socket is either collected, or left in the machine. There's nowhere else it could go. It's not like a tape measure or a pen that carried around house and could be put somewhere without you consciously registering it. Maybe some washing machines have really strange geometry that is prone to conceal socks?

Dogs are a big factor here. Cats less so.

I have, however, just settled on a uniform for work: same underwear, white or black socks, grey t-shirt under my scrubs (oh, the joys of wearing pajamas at work). Darn Tough socks aren’t cheap, but they are guaranteed for life, and they’re great for preventing smelly feet if you’re prone to them.

Now that you mentioned pets, it makes perfect sense to me.

My cat has indeed never been interested in socks. However, he'll move almost everything else. I still remember the day I had to wear sun glasses to classes, because he hid my normal glasses, later discovered to be behind the bookcase.

I solved my socks issue once and for-all when I moved out of home - I bought 10 pairs of the exact same sock so that you can never mix a pair up by mistake. Over the years as they either get holes or stretch to much, I replace it with a new pair of the exactly item

Getting short on socks? By another 10-pack of the same brand/colour. If you only ever wear one type of socks, this is just sensible. My socks are always in order, and there will be at most one sock not paired with another.

Unfortunately, this only works where the feet have stopped growing, and where the choice of fashion makes this feasible. Mostly, that's adult men with standard black or otherwise dark socks. My young son loves brightly patterned and colourful socks with variation (as befits a five year old), but keeping those paired is challenging.

This is the Way.

I have one kind of gym sock and one kind of dress sock. I never need to pair socks; each type goes into a box in my dresser or closet.

Similarly, I never fold gym shorts, gym shirts, or underwear. (Who cares?) Each gets stuffed in a general area of a drawer. The time savings substantially outweighs the inefficient use of space.

My usual t-shirts (32° from Costco — super comfortable) are generally wrinkle-free and likewise just get stuffed in a bin.

95% of the time my outfits are grab-and-go and require minimal laundry effort.

Grab-and-go? I like the sound of that.

My wife pointed out to me early this year that I have a uniform which I didn’t actually notice until then - the same jeans (multiple pairs of the same style in black and blue), and only one style of t-shirt but in 3 colours (it’s a lie - I have 2 styles of t-shirt).

It might sound boring to some, but there’s no better feeling to me than to not even have to think when getting dressed - it’s a FILO Queue!

I am intrigued about people losing socks because it never happened to me.

My guess is that people using a dryer are probably more prone to be victims of this.

How I do things is: - put dirty clothes in the dirty clothes bag as soon as I undress - put clothes by type in a laundry bag before washing them - hanging clean clothes to dry

The last part is probably the most important, because if you hang an odd number of socks, you know there's an issue so you'll look for the missing one. And the laundry bags will avoid you having socks stuck in pants/trousers.

After yesterday's laundry I counted the mismatched socks: 22. I have no frickin idea where could one misplace twenty-two socks but well here I am.

Socks can end up stuck in a pair of shorts (if you mix laundry) only to fall out somewhere in the streets if you're not paying attention.

Sounds like an argument for one of those mesh laundry bags, so that the laundry load is mixed (multiple categories) without being mixed (individual items interspersed).

I have an "unpaired socks stay in the laundry-room" policy which covers most cases, but it won't help if one of them exfiltrates within another piece of clothing.

How do you get from drying to storing to picking and wearing a pair of shorts without noticing there's a sock stuck inside? I could maybe buy it in case of some loose long pants, but with shorts, you can literally see the entire inside surface when you're lifting them to wear.

Wait, there are people who don't 'mix' laundry like shorts with socks?! For what purpose? Obviously racial segregation and anything needing a different temp or other setting, but ceteris paribus a shorts wash and a socks wash?

Yeppp.

That’s why I started checking. If you don’t catch it early, you’re not going to find it.

Sometimes it also just gets stuck in some clothes and it doesn’t fall out on its own too. If I’m missing a sock, I give my clothes the ol’ shake.