Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Tip #2 How to keep up with the socks

Assalam alykom:

Well, as all of you homeschooling mothers know, keeping up with your house duties can really be a challenge. Here is another advice that is part of the laundry. It might save you some time. Any time that you can save in homeschooling can be very valuable. I have six people in my family. Keeping socks organized as they drift through the laundry process can be impossible sometimes. I have been given the advice to pin them when you put them in the wash or wash them in a seperate bag. Well, none of these methods worked for me because it was to much trouble to pin them and washing them in a seperate bag was to much trouble for me to coordinate. Here is what I found works for me. When I take the clothes from the dryer, I right away remove the socks and place them in a designated sock basket. I do not worry about seperating and matching the socks at this point. Once a week, I have my two older children sort all the socks for the week. They make a game out of it sometimes and see who can match the most socks. After they finish matching, they each put them all away. This works great for us. We may still have missing socks, but at least those we could find are all matched up each week.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

assalamu alaikum ummnour,
Alhamduillah...what a wise thing to do masha Allah. I guess it will always be the talk of missing socks. I guess too that we will have to learn to live with missing socks. We will keep trying..never give up.
ma salaama..love
Banu

Anonymous said...

As Salaamu Aleikum,

A great idea. Always a good to find ways to get the children *happily* involved in household chores!

My children are all grown now, but I used to have them help with the matching of the socks sometimes. One problem I ran into with this however, is that they had some trouble matching 'white socks'. They just couldnt seem to catch on to the subtleties of the various cuff patterns...which were the only way to tell which were which. (and I'm very picky, so if cuff patterns dont match, I find it really annoying!)

But they were quite helpful with the colored socks, as I am color blind, (which in humans, means you see color, just not always the right color...), and therefore was often mismatching the colored socks! I was always having to ask my children, 'What color are these, really?'. Dark blue, black, brown, red, green all look the same to me...(the same sock will sometimes even change colors, right before my eyes!)

After 35 years of doing laundry, I dont guess I'll ever understand what happens to the socks I'm SURE I put in the laundry, which somehow never come back out again... Does the washer and dryer just EAT them, or what?

I have learned to always check inside the corners of sheets, and for signs of socks stuck to the clothes, but no matter how hard I try to keep track of them, they still come up missing, regularly!

Jada

Um Nour/Hollie Moore said...

Assalm alykom Jada:

I know what you mean about matching the sock patterns. I have three girls ages 8,4 and 2. I really made the mistake this time of buying socks that are all the same for the girls. They were on sale, a package of ten socks. Now, they are a mess to match. Not only do we need to match the rim, but the size too. I cannot tell you how many times I have pulled socks for my two year old, only to find there is one that fits her and one that fits my eight year old! I think the laugh is on myself for that purchase!