Comment by aquafox
2 years ago
I never lost a single sock during or after washing. Why? Because I care (they are expensive cycling socks) and I go after each sock immediately when putting them on the drying rack. So where are they? 1) Entangled with one of the other wet clothing items. (60% of cases) 2) Lost on the way between laundry machine and drying rack (20% of cases) 3) Still in the laundry drum (20% of cases).
I see your point, I’m a neat freak who cares about most things I possess. Trouble is, we don’t always have time to be this neat. For example, I’m standing in my laundry room rolling up socks when suddenly someone calls from upstairs. I go into my hallway, still working on a pair of socks, and discover it’s my partner calling me because our son just defecated on the floor of the tiny bathroom upstairs. I throw the socks on the first available surface and run to help, focusing on the new problem at hand, and now the socks are lost. This exact situation is on the extreme side of course. It’s more common for me personally to put down a glass/cup to assist someone with a minor yet to them seemingly important task and then proceed to search for my lost bevrage.
A german kids show investigated this and made a video about it[1]. Here you can see the 4th option of what can happen.
[1] https://youtu.be/-sYZEOftpw4?si=T4btvhTJpfSzA9q2&t=35
Isn't there a fourth failure case - that they have failed to make it into the drum in the first place? Maybe not a huge issue for yourself, but can occur in my workflow.
This is the one which annoys me most, and so I have to have a 'staging area' for unpaired socks which are awaiting their unwashed partners.