'The one question I keep asking as a parent - and it's starting to really do my head in'
There are plenty of questions I find myself asking again and again as a parent, but there's one that's really starting to do my head in.
Where are all the socks going?
I have a toddler, and she's probably got about four matching pairs of socks right now because they just keep disappearing.
Every time I do the washing I'm left with an odd sock or two, which would be fine if the other half of the pair was somewhere but they just keep vanishing into thin air.
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These are just SOME of the single socks I've got shoved in a drawer waiting to find the pair. Supplied/Amy Lyall
Now, I've heard stories about hidden filters in your washing machine, or the dryer, which are quietly eating your tiny little socks every time you do the laundry – but I've looked and the filters are clean.
We have a front loader and there's no collection of socks stuck inside the seal either, they're just disappearing.
But it's not just during the washing. Oh, no.
During a lovely breakfast out for Mother's Day, my daughter kicked off her shoes at the table – but do you think we could find two socks when it was time to leave? No.
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Another load of washing out of the dryer, and another lonely sock. Supplied / Amy Lyall
One sock had just gone MIA, despite all of us searching the floor around where we were sitting and the table.
Ask any parent of a baby, and they'll tell you nine times out of 10 you'll leave the house and they've got two socks on their feet, and the next time you look one is just *poof* gone.
It's constant.
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Doing a quick tidy of the lounge room and of course, there's one single pink sock floating around. Supplied / Amy Lyall
There's just a sock in the lounge room, or three single lonely socks at the bottom of the washing pile, and I just cannot understand why.
Surely there's a way to fix this?
Is it bundling up all the socks – because mine and my husband's sneak off too – into delicate bags to throw into the washing machine? That way there's no chance of anything getting sucked into a filter or washed down the drain, never to be seen again.
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Or do I try tying them in pairs to throw into the wash? Surely they're not going to get as clean as they could that way, but they will stay together.
Maybe the best solution is to only buy socks of the same colour and brand. That way there's always going to be two that match, no matter how many disappear off to wherever missing socks go.
In almost two years of being a mum, I feel like the thing I've replaced most often is socks, and I've got quite the stash growing of singles.
So for now, it seems like the mystery is far from over and she's going to keep going to daycare in mismatched socks.
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