Elisabeth’s post earlier this week spun me on a sock tangent. She wondered whether people put their socks on before or after they put their pants on. (Go read her post to find out!) (I sometimes put my socks on first, sometimes once my pants are on. Depends on the pants.) But the more pressing question, in my mind, is HOW you put your socks on: Do you stand or do you sit?
I stand. I balance on one foot while I put one sock on, then balance on the other foot to put the other sock on. My dad does the same thing, as we discovered over Christmas. That’s the kind of riveting discussions we have around here.
My husband and daughter sit to put their socks on.
Based on this very small sample size, I’m extrapolating that there are two (primary) types of socks-putter-onners: sitters and standers.
The only time I sit is when I’m putting on tights. Which aren’t socks, but are similar enough that I’m mentioning them here.
Which camp are you in?
While we’re on the fascinating topic of socks, I have some other sock-related questions.
Do you prefer fun socks or plain socks? When I met my husband, he wore pretty much only plain white athletic socks that he bought in a multi-pack from Target. A few years ago, I started buying him fun socks from Sock Fancy and Bomba and Happy Feet, and now he has a drawer so cram-jammed with fun socks that he cannot fit another pair in there. (Nonetheless, he got FIVE PAIRS of socks for Christmas.)
I have experienced the opposite trajectory. I used to love fun knee-high socks in all sorts of patterns. But these days, I stick to a multi-pack of athletic ankle socks that I get from Costco. It’s just so much easier! I can rummage around in my sock drawer and grab a ball of socks and know it’s going to work.
Speaking of balled socks: are you a baller or shot caller, I mean a person who doesn’t ball their socks? I ball my socks up with wild abandon. Yes, I have read that doing so puts additional stress on your socks, and can stretch them out. But I have never once had an issue, so I have decided it’s worth the risk.
My husband REFUSES to ball his socks. He will carefully tuck the top of one sock into the folded-over top of its mate and that’s as much as he’s willing to do. When it comes to his (now small) stash of athletic socks, he stacks them on top of one another. He is much neater than I am.
My daughter prefers a secret third option, which is to throw all her socks, unpaired, into her drawer and then complain to me that she doesn’t have any clean socks when I ask why, for the love of tacos, did she come down to breakfast YET AGAIN without her socks on.
Do you wear socks to bed? My husband does not. I used to be firmly anti-sock while I slept. But since dealing with plantar fasciitis, and needing to wear shoes at pretty much all times, it’s just more convenient to sleep with socks on. Then I can shove my feet into my sneakers when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I also tend to moisturize my feet overnight, and I wear socks while I do that so the foot lotion doesn’t get all over my sheets. Ew. Lotiony sheets.
However, I vastly PREFER having bare feet while I sleep. It just… doesn’t work out that way, these days. Sometimes I end up ripping the socks off in the middle of the night and flinging them into the dark.
How many pairs of socks do you own? I tend to get sick of socks and then buy new socks without getting rid of the socks I already own. My husband, as I mentioned before, has an entire drawer of fun socks… and a separate drawer for athletic socks. (To be fair, the athletic socks take up a small portion of the second drawer.) That’s a lot of socks!
I did a very brief internet search for how many socks a person SHOULD own, and the answer seems to lie somewhere between 7 and 16. I started to count my socks and then gave up, but I think it’s at LEAST 20 pairs. That’s probably a very conservative estimate.
Now tell me all your sock-related quirks.
