Socks Challenge
Last month I promised to make September's decluttering challenge an easy one, but the difficulty level of any challenge is pretty relative. It felt prudent to consult my sock collecting little sister on this sorting plan I was trying to articulate. She gave me a tsunami sized eye roll and then showed me her sock drawers. (Yes, that was drawers with an s) Socks are kind of a thing in my family. My dad was particular about “foundational clothing”. Anything in that category needed to be of high quality, made for support and durability, but not unnecessarily expensive. One of his favorite hobbies was cruising Marshall’s for discounted name brand wool socks. He kept a shopping bag in his closet of brand new socks that I would pilfer during every visit, and at Christmas he didn’t bother wrapping them, he’d just bring out the bag, give you a contemplative stare, harumph a few times, maybe throw in a bah humbug, then hand you the pair of socks that you deserved. No swapsies. What I didn’t know at the time was that he gave socks to more people than just his family, and after he passed away, friends of his would hold a sock drive in his memory and hand out new socks to folks living on the street on Christmas day. I don’t think the tradition survived covid, but my older sister still does it on her own some years. Awwww, I miss my dad.
Well that got me all emo. Let’s sort some socks!
**Full disclosure, when I start thinking about sorting something, there’s a pretty quick spiral into the deep minutiae of it all. Please know that thinking, “yeah I should declutter my sock drawer”, pulling out a few pairs you don’t like and getting on with your day, is still a win. That’s all I needed to say, carry on.
Preparation: Do a load of laundry and make sure all your dirty socks get washed. If you’re really committed, pull the dresser out from the wall or get down on the floor with a flashlight and a broomstick and fish out any errant socks hiding in the dark. Same for around the washer/dryer, under the couch, and maybe between the cushions. Don’t get distracted by the crumbs and dog hair! You have a singular purpose at the moment, hunting socks.
Aside from sock hunting, it would be good to take a few minutes to sit down and think about numbers. How many socks of the categories that you wear often do you believe is reasonable to own, so that you don’t run out between laundry loads? How many pairs do you want to own to feel confident you’ll have the socks you need? For example, my instinct says that I need at the very minimum, seven pairs of ankle sport socks, but after taking a deep breath to release the anxiety from an imagined sock shortage, I can also say I don’t need more than ten. We do laundry fairly often, but if you only get to do laundry every couple weeks, you probably need a larger number. Also consider socks you only use occasionally, like snow socks, or thick winter boot socks. I want to have three or four pairs, so if I go to the mountains this winter, I could have a pair for each day, but I never need more than that. Write these numbers down. Your brain will naturally inflate them when you’re looking at all your comfy cute socks and trying to make tough decisions.
The Big Sort: Once you’ve gathered ALL the socks you own, find an open space that’s clear, like the livingroom floor, a table, or your bed. You’ll need room to make piles.
Sort paired up socks by type, and put any singles in one pile to the side. You don’t need to spend mental energy remembering which pile you put which single into when its partner shows up, just set all the singles aside for now.
For your type piles, it’s most effective to sort them by use or type of shoe they work with. Height is also a helpful descriptor for sorting socks. I don’t suggest sorting by color at this point. Here are some examples of type-piles:
Very thick winter socks for outdoor adventures
Warm socks for regular use in the winter
Socks for exercising
Crew socks
Ankle socks
No-show socks
Dress socks
Knee highs
Slipper socks
Novelty socks
Toe socks
Compression socks
Pantyhose/tights (I think they can count as socks for this exercise)
Etc…. i googled sock types and learned tactical socks exist. Use as many categories as you need.
Once those are all sorted, get your pile of singles, and lay them out one by one in a line, until you come across a match, then add that pair to its type-pile. I’m sure there will be some leftover unmatched socks. It’s okay to hold onto them for a while, unless you know they lost their buddy years ago and they're not coming back, but if they match other socks and just didn’t get paired up in this round, they can be your backup in case one of its doppelgangers get’s a hole.
Now for the decluttering phase. You’re going to create two more piles, a recycle pile and a donate pile. We’re assessing each type-pile, one at a time. Spread out the socks and look for any pairs that are obviously falling apart or have holes. Plop into the recycling pile. I’ll talk more about recycling textiles near the end. Now, if you actually like wearing all of them and the number remaining is roughly the same as the number that you previously decided was reasonable, great!, move onto the next pile. But if you need to cull a few, here’s some questions to help. Is there a pair or two that you routinely push aside because your subconscious remembers they’re not comfortable, always slip down, the seam irritates your baby toe, they make your feet extra sweaty, or some other reason for not choosing them? These go in the donation pile. Your reason does not have to be logical, if you’re not going to wear them and they don’t have any extra special significance to you (like being hand knit by a beloved great-grandma) they don’t need to take up space in your home. Imagine you’re in a rush and you ask a partner or kid to grab you a pair of socks. Which ones would you go put back and exchange for a better pair, even when you’re short on time? You don’t need to keep those.
How’s it going meeting your number goals? If the number left in the pile far exceeds the amount of socks you told yourself was reasonable, pull a couple more out for donation and see how you feel. Can you let go of a few more? I’d suggest at least meeting your past self half way. If you said 6 pairs was reasonable, but you have 14, try to choose 4 more to donate. You’ll be keeping 10, which is a good compromise. (14+6)/2=10
Here’s some more questions to help you make the tough cuts. Any pair still around that was a gift from your ex-boyfriend’s mom who gave you side-eye every time you ate a cookie? Let those go! Are you still holding onto the hospital socks from getting your appendix removed? You don’t need those. Twenty pairs of thick winter socks but it never goes below 55 degrees where you live. Donate ‘em. Or do you have pantyhose from a wedding you attended 5 years ago, and never used again? Or ugh, what about the no-show socks that never stay in place and turn into a roll of material down at your toes? Recycle those jerks, nobody wants those.
Are you holding on to a couple of bad pairs “just in case”. I’m going to make up some numbers. Suppose you have 20 pairs of socks you like and 2 pairs you hate but you keep them around “just in case” for a total of 22 pairs. Getting rid of those two and only owning 20 instead of 22 won’t make a difference in how often you do laundry, but it does mean that when you reach for a pair of socks, you always grab a pair you like.
Organizing the keep piles: I’m a big fan of making your own organizing systems from recycled cardboard boxes (think cake mix boxes or long cracker boxes, just cut off one side and reinforce the corners with tape). They’re free, modular, and free. But if that’s too DIY for you, sock drawer dividers exist. Some folks use baskets or boxes on shelves. Everybody has a different system for clothes. If you’re going to buy organizing boxes for a drawer, measure the height first. Another reason I like recycling food boxes, you can just cut them down to size. For placement, the goal is accessibility for the socks you use the most often. Those go upfront, while off-season and specialty socks can go in the harder to reach places. I keep three boxes, one for bulky winter socks, one for ankle sport socks, and one for all the rest. In the winter, the ankle sport socks get swapped with the daily warm socks. You’ll probably need more categories than that. This is your system and you can do whatever you want.
For folding, I like making sock balls so the pairs are guaranteed to stay together, but if you’re a KonMari devotee, you’ll know that’s a big no-no. According to Marie Kondo, the best way to store socks is to lay the socks down on top of eachother, and roll them like a fruit roll-up. Sock cuffs don’t get stretched out and they look like pretty flowers when lined up. I get it, but I still like my sock balls. Do what works for you.
Donations: If you keep a bag in your closet to drop donations into, that makes this easy. Unless you were an avid sock collector, this decluttering challenge probably won’t create a full enough donation bag to warrant an entire trip to your local donation drop off. Keeping a donation bag in your closet is a good strategy anyways, so start one now if you need to. Next time you come across something in your closet that doesn’t fit or you plain don’t like anymore, you’ll have somewhere to put it.
Recycling: Textiles ending up in landfills is actually a big problem. However, It’s quite difficult to truly recycle fabric. It has to be 100% one type of material, like cotton or wool, to then be broken down and turned into more of that same material. And technology doesn't exist to scan and pick out from large piles the pieces that are “pure”. When we recycle fabrics, it usually goes to a facility to be sorted into various categories of wearability for clothes or other uses for non clothes, and then bundled and sent to thrift stores, or maybe a company that will chop it up for stuffing, or sold to foreign countries, where it is again sorted by wearability and uses, and eventually ends up in their landfills instead of ours. Yeah, I know that sounds a little bleak. Consider this; if you just put your holey socks in the trash, they’re going straight to the landfill, but if you can recycle them, they get a second chance and might end up inside a punching bag.
Free Recycling Options:
H&M: This clothing store, which has locations across the country, has textile recycling bins in their stores and they’ll give you a coupon for a discount off future purchases. Here’s a link to find a store near you. https://www2.hm.com/en_us/customer-service/shopping-at-hm/store-locator.html
City Gov Recycling Programs: I’m privileged to live in a city with a very progressive recycling/composting program. Berkeley has a free textile recycling bin at the City’s Recycling Center. I’m not sure how well it’s sorted, but it’s free. Your city might offer something similar. Check your city government’s website.
Paid options:
Ridwell: If you have an account with this supplemental recycling pickup program, that’s rad. I love Ridwell. They give you a canvas bag every two weeks to put your clean fabric recyclables into. It makes recycling textiles super easy. An unlimited subscription is $24/month and includes many things besides fabric, like, multi-layer plastic (think cereal bags, chip bags, freezer bags), styrofoam, electronics, lightbulbs, batteries, etc… The downside is they’re limited geographically. https://www.ridwell.com/
Trashie: This is a mail-in service. For $20, they send you a decent sized plastic mailer bag, you fill it with old clothes, textiles, and even shoes and non-fabric stuff like jewelry and costumes, then drop it in the mail. They sort it and send it off, either to be resold or recycled. There is no guarantee that your stuff won’t end up in landfills, but they say they can resell or recycle 90% of what they receive. The videos of their facility are kind of mesmerizing. https://www.trashie.io/homepage-b4
RetoldRecylcing: another mailer bag service. These bags cost around $16 each and can include usable and unusable textiles. They sort it for you and send it to thrift stores, upcyclers, or to be recycled. The bags don’t look that big but they guarantee nothing goes to a landfill. https://www.retoldrecycling.com/
And…
It’s not easy being a responsible consumer, and if you’re overwhelmed and in survival mode at the moment, recycling your old socks does not need to be a priority. It’s okay.
Here’s one more cute sock story for ya.
One morning, putting laundry away with my youngest, who was only 4 or 5 at the time, I pointed out that we were both wearing gray sweatpants and green shirts. His face lit up and he said, “mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom… MOM, lie down. Truuuuust me, just lie down” He was a ball of giggles and I needed to see where this was going so I complied. He then climbed inside the bottom of my thankfully already stretched out t-shirt, popped his head out the neck and declared “We’re sorted socks!”
Happy Sorting!