Socks pose a unique challenge when organizing your home. Their size, weight, and shape make it easy for them to get jumbled up with underwear, scarves, and other smaller types of clothing. There’s nothing worse than not being able to find the santa socks that you got for Christmas, mortified in the knowledge that they are almost certainly gone forever. Yet, the easiest thing to do in the world is to lose a sock, and to this day, the location of all the world’s lost single socks remain a mystery. But don’t worry – in this post, we’ll teach you the easiest, cheapest, and most practical ways to keep your socks organized and safe from the Bermuda Triangle that is your home closet. What would you do without your photo socks? It doesn’t bear thinking about!
Out With the Old
The less things you have, the easier they are to organize. From Overwhelmed to Organized reminds us that it’s best to let go of things that you no longer have any use for, particularly if you have a tendency to hoard clothes and accessories. So throw out those old socks and donate the intact ones to charity. When I was trying to organise my socks, I came across an old pair of face socks that I was once gifted. I thought about getting rid of them but they actually hold a lot of memories, so I decided to keep them. With all your socks, it’ll be much easier to keep everything organised.
Fold Your Socks Like an Army Ranger
It turns out surviving in horrible conditions isn’t the only thing that US Army Rangers excel at. Lifehacker claims that the Rangers employ a space-saving packing style that uses the socks’ own elastic to keep pairs intact.
This is how to Ranger Roll your socks in pairs: Lay them flat on top of one another facing the same direction. Starting from the bottom of the socks, roll them up all the way to the middle where the foot section ends. As you’re rolling, make sure to maintain a uniform width.
Hold the roll in place and fold the top sock inwards for about two inches. Continue rolling to the edge of the bottom sock. Once the roll is complete, hold it in place by inserting your four fingers into the bottom sock’s hole and pinching the other side of the roll with your thumb. Use your other hand to take the top part of the elastic and wrap it around the whole roll. Just take note that this method may take its toll on the elastic over time, so only use it for travel.
The Stand-Up Method
Sometimes the simplest solutions prove to be the best. Roll up your pairs and place them in your drawer tightly beside each other standing up. This allows you to easily see all your socks and grab a pair without disrupting the whole drawer. Loose sock groups can be tightened using shoeboxes, drawer dividers, or even stuffed toys. If your problem is zero drawer space, here on Mission 2 Organize we advise alternative types of storage. Get a separate box or lined basket (to avoid snags) with a lid and dedicate it to just your socks.
Freestyle!
Organizing socks is also an exercise in imagination. For instance, you can stuff your socks into empty toilet rolls before you put them in the drawer. Multi-colored socks can be organized into a rainbow, or single-colored pairs organized into a gradient. Foxy Bingo advises that instead of throwing old socks out you can glue wool and googly eyes on them to make sock puppets (and keep trash out of the landfill). These are just some of the hundreds of ways you can go about organizing or reusing your socks.
If you’re stumped for ideas, just look at pictures of DIY organizing projects online, like the ones on Organizing Made Fun. Experimenting with different ways to organize will allow you to find the method that suits your needs best.
