15 ms·

On Having Enough Socks (2019)

67 points by hacb 3y ago

wbsun 3y ago
My wife and I used to spend a lots of time pairing socks for the family after laundry. We hated it. When my son started picking up clothes and socks for himself to ware everyday, he picked any two socks, no bother to pair at all. We tried several times teaching him to find matching socks but we failed. Now everyone in the family wares unmatched socks… the little one changed our family :D I am wondering whether the kids will start pairing socks when he and his older sister grow up to teenagers and start paying attention to their appearances.
moogly 3y ago
I realized at the young age of 35 that most socks are much more comfortable to wear inside-out, to avoid the seam from chafing against your toes. So I've been doing that ever since. Now, in latter years I've found some socks that are properly designed, with the seam not at the toe tips but rather on the top of the socks.
slotrans 3y ago
Buy high-quality merino/nylon socks (Smartwool, Darn Tough, etc) and you will not have this problem. I have pairs that have lasted 10 years and are still going strong. Yes, they're expensive compared to the usual cotton stuff. It's because they're better.
ano-ther 3y ago
Clearly an important problem for mankind. In Switzerland there is a sock subscription service: https://www.blacksocks.com/ https://www.blacksocks.com/
- vgalin 3y ago
  Interestingly, they have a "barcode" system that allow them (and allow us) to know the age of a given sock. "Blacksocks knows the age of all socks" https://www.blacksocks.com/en/ageofthesocksen https://www.blacksocks.com/en/ageofthesocksen
bugmen0t 3y ago
So, what's the solution to pairing socks? Buying many pairs from the same. Sure. That makes sense. But what happens when half of them are lost or damaged and you can't buy the same kind? Do you end up as someone pairing socks again or do you throw away half of your socks?
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Even nice socks are pretty cheap. Time spent thinking about socks is almost certainly negatively valued due to when factoring in opportunity costs. So yeah, toss the orphan socks.
- rodnim 3y ago
  You can always demote the other half of socks to cleaning supplies. They are really useful to stick your hand into and start going to all those hard to reach places all around the house, gathering dust. When done, just turn them inside out to trap the dust inside and THEN throw them away. Just make sure to clean them first. :)
- mr_mitm 3y ago
  If you rotate your socks appropriately the other half is probably about to be damaged anyway, so just throw them out. The savings on using each sock until the very end are marginal.
- ianbooker 3y ago
  Color. I only buy socks in colors or patterns I do not own. Super simple.
- aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
- eschneider 3y ago
  I tend to get white socks or black socks. Over time, yes, different brands are not an exact match but in general, it's close enough for me and I just don't worry about it.
- 3y ago
pantulis 3y ago
In order to avoid the effort of pairing socks, I once had the genius idea of buying them all the same colors. Then all hell broke loose as the color may be the same, but they were from different pairs still and so became more difficult to pair: you will lose an individual sock but not a pair. I stopped losing socks as I began buying them in bright colors so pairs where trivial to spot in all the sock journey during laundry.
- misnome 3y ago
  I lay out all of my black socks in a spectrum, and then pair to their neighbouring sock. Probably not efficient, but can be therapeutic.
  - ArekDymalski 3y ago
    Excellent comment. Sounds like an introduction to "Zen and the art of socks maintenance". HN is the only place find such gems.
- basscomm 3y ago
  I solved that problem by doing a bulk buy of 20 pairs of socks that were all the same color and same style from one manufacturer.
  - reneherse 3y ago
    This worked for me for awhile. Eventually it becomes necessary to pair them by level of wear, which is tedious, but you can cull the worst from the pile, or start over with an entirely new bunch.
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  Huh, I was considering going the other way. I was hoping HN knew the holy grail of high quality, ambidextrous, single color socks
  - rawgabbit 3y ago
washywashy 3y ago
You can never have enough. Keeping the ones with small holes is even somewhat useful
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
I’m not sure, I think people might be over complicating socks. I have an O(n) pairing process that is about the same complexity as if I had the same socks all the time. If I encounter a sock I haven’t paired, it’s laid flat somewhere clean. Then when I pick up a sock I can do a visual o(1) lookup to find a pair, otherwise it’s laid flat where the others are. Eventually the unpaired socks are first examined if I didn’t miss any, and then are tossed if they’re just lost a pair.
- Epa095 3y ago
  I use the same, but for me it's definitely n^2, because the visual lookup is not constant. Some of the problem might be that I am old, stupid, and slow, but also because I (stupidly) have a lot of socks that look quite similar, but are not the same. Sometimes I even have to lift them up and feel them to notice that they are different!
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    If you have texturally distinct socks, pairing in bright light can help with this. You can also have a “sense-memory” because you touched that socks when you cached it, so if you have visually similar but textually different socks, you can still perform a quick lookup with touch-memory.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    I hear a lot of people saying "buy all identical socks" to simplify pairing, but I use the opposite strategy. Buy colourful, distinctively patterned socks like [1] and pairing them up is trivial. [1] https://www.johnlewis.com/happy-socks-classic-pattern-print-socks-pack-of-5-multi/p6340126 https://www.johnlewis.com/happy-socks-classic-pattern-print-...
- klausa 3y ago
  You either have a very small amount of socks, or a very good spatial memory to be able to claim the visual lookup of socks on the surface is O(1). With my brain, it's closer to O(n!). (This is the worst, nerdiest collection of sentences I've written in my life.)
adityaathalye 3y ago
I accidentally solved this problem by entirely side-stepping socks, because I could, because I switched from management to programming, and I don't live in a cold country. For about a decade now, I've worn open sandals pretty much everywhere and for almost every occasion. The few times I've had to wear socks (because, dress shoes), I've found some pairs handy in my closet.
- bottom999mottob 3y ago
  This might be the play. I avoid wearing socks and closed-toe shoes as much as I can, but I've found many people in the West are disgusted by the sight of feet. Cloud slippers are heavenly.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Sandals are super popular in the west
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    I also know people who hate open-toe shoes for the lack of protection.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      https://www.amazon.com/N-Y-L-Breathable-Protective-wear-Resistant-Construction/dp/B07S1GWFVP https://www.amazon.com/N-Y-L-Breathable-Protective-wear-Resi... Whether that is a steel toe sandal or a shoe with big holes is left to the reader.
      - pasc1878 3y ago
        Depends what protection you are after. I need to really clean my shows as it was very muddy and I was not expecting to go that way so not wering my fully waterproff hiking boots. Yes sandals are easier to clean but won't fell as comforatble
  - throwaway1777 3y ago
Jedd 3y ago
There's a few comments - seemingly from our American friends - that seem to suggest that left / right socks are a thing. I'm hoping I'm parsing those comments poorly, but ever since the revelation that Americans don't have kettles, I'm prepared for the worst. I got fed up with poor socks a few years ago and embarked on a project to try to find the best, or at least consistently decent, work socks. That's work in the sense of stomping around in the workshop or outdoors, in heavy duty boots, spending most of my day standing up or moving around -- not work as in sitting at a chair for 8h while wearing mildly uncomfortable but aesthetically appropriate footwear, occasionally shuffling around a carpeted floor, etc. Anyway, that was basically a despairing effort. Unsurprisingly, everyone claiming to have the best socks did not, in fact, have the best socks. I did end up with a stack of hard-yakka bamboo socks, which were surprisingly comfortable when worn with big heavy blundstone boots, but about a year after discovering (and building up quite a large collection) I moved to hard-yakka boots, and then found out that the combination of their bamboo socks with their boots would result in a very uncomfortable bunching of sock around the ankle. Bonds - very popular purveyors of socks and daks and other necessities here in Straya - have some work socks that I've since settled on, though a top-up purchase made a few months ago suggest they've changed their recipe from ~18 months back, feels like a higher ratio of nylon to cotton, but alas no record was maintained of the first tranche, so I am wary, but so far satisfied. (For actual day-job work socks, Bonds here also do a range of basic-black that come in 3-pair sets, which have tiny lines of primary colours along the toes, red, green, blue, etc - originally I thought that was quite twee as it would help maintain pairs, but in practice it just feels like a way to shift more product - as there's no reason, beyond obsession, to match 'miscoloured stripe' pairs, but when one of a pair inevitably expires, you're then left with the difficult decision of committing fully to going pairless in the sock drawer, or throwing away a perfectly fine sock out of sympathy.)
- tuatoru 3y ago
  > best socks You want to check out backpacking gear review sites like Outdoor Gear Lab, Section Hiker, or for the most authoritative data, Backpacking Light ($). In the mean time, try searching for Darn Tough, Silverlight Socks or Smartwool for boot socks. The longstanding English manufacturer Bridgedale must have been taken over by MBAs recently because it is being marketed heavily. Their socks may be fine; I don't know. Then there is Injinji, and other two-layer (inner and outer) and toe-separated sock systems more generally. I like Injinji's sport sock (once I got over the look of my feet in socks with five separate toes). Injinji has a range of socks made from different textiles. All of these use wool/synthetic blends, with the synthetic usually some form of nylon. Silverlight's nylon is coated with silver for antimicrobial properties (reduced stink). I have just placed an order for a five-pack. (I also spend up to 10.5 hours a day on my feet in boots.) For non-wool, thinner socks I use Drymax, which are aimed at the running/athletics crowd. I've found them very durable (used them quite a bit for tramping (NZ-ish for bushwalking/hiking) and very easy-care. They are not left-right differentiated though.
emodendroket 3y ago
I have the opposite problem: I feel I'm running out of socks and buy them too often. If only this carried over to other aspects of maintenance I'd be in business.
not_the_fda 3y ago
I buy socks every 6 months, I have summer socks and winter socks. All the summer socks are the same color and brand, same with the winter. When I buy the next seasons socks I give the old ones to charity. I buy 14 pairs at a time. No pairing problem, and I always have socks.
- wand3r 3y ago
  I buy them at Marshalls and TJ Max and if you notice, a lot of the socks are mixed pairs. 6 pairs but each pair has a different logo on it. There are only a few that are all the same in a single pack.
bravura 3y ago
Thorlo Padded socks are amazing. I own maybe 8 pairs of their thick padded crew socks in black, which are versatile and great. e.g. for boots. Their padded ankle socks are great for sneakers + sport. And then I collect non-Thorlo beautiful colorful socks for dress shoes. There hasn't been much handwringing in my life about socks since I adopted this approach.
FredPret 3y ago
How to solve socks: 1. For each type of sock you need, find only one you like best, perhaps on Amazon or at Costco 2. Get a container for each kind - I have the soft shell travel zipup kind. 3. Buy en masse and stuff each container. 4. Don’t let anyone in your house discover your sock nirvana You never have to match pairs again
- willcipriano 3y ago
  My version. Buy these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09SP4GGWJ?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09SP4GGWJ?psc=1 End of list.
  - jtbayly 3y ago
    "for homeless" socks. I never knew such things existed. P.S. You aren't, by chance, homeless, are you?
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      No, they are just the cheapest socks I could find.
      - crooked-v 3y ago
        Buying the cheapest socks you can find is a great way to pay more in the long run than buying higher-quality socks.
        willcipriano 3y ago
        I pay 50 cents per sock. At the rate they get lost this is more economical in my experience. At three dollars a sock you need to get 6x the uses to break even and even those are considered cheap socks by some.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Pretty much. Even if you somehow run out, in the absolute worst case of "you need to buy another batch and they are different" then * you only need to pull 3 socks to have at least 2 of them match * they are black anyway, not like someone will notice. And if they do, tell them to keep their feet fetish in check
jimmaswell 3y ago
As a male programmer, at home I like to wear "programmer socks", as the meme goes: https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/031/279/Screen_Shot_2019-09-26_at_1.07.31_PM.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/031/279/Scr... Anyone else?
- deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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codr7 3y ago
(define-solver yak-solver () (wax-car (car-needs-waxing have-hose) (car-waxed) (car-needs-waxing)) (get-new-hose (have-ez-pass) (have-hose)) (borrow-ez-pass (return-mooshi-pillow) (have-ez-pass)) (fix-mooshi-pillow (have-yak) (return-mooshi-pillow)) (visit-zoo () (have-yak))) (multiple-value-bind (ok? actions) (yak-solver '(car-needs-waxing) '(car-waxed)) (assert ok?) (assert (equal actions '(VISIT-ZOO FIX-MOOSHI-PILLOW BORROW-EZ-PASS GET-NEW-HOSE WAX-CAR)))))
- codr7 3y ago
  https://github.com/codr7/cl-ps https://github.com/codr7/cl-ps
fmajid 3y ago
I buy Falke socks en masse whenever on sale and have ample stock of unused socks available (at the moment about a dozen pairs) for use whenever I have to retire a pair because it is worn out or lost its mate. Small things, but like shoes or mattresses, comfortable socks make a huge difference to your quality of life given how much of your life you spend in them.
ilaksh 3y ago
I don't usually wear much clothing because I rarely go out. Like maybe once or twice a month maximum do I need to leave the apartment complex. When it gets chilly (which half the time is the AC) sometimes I put socks on though. Its probably been about a week since I washed my socks. I have mainly been putting on the same (usually dirty) pair for the last three months. Often dirty for three weeks or more. But only for a little while usually because then my feet get too warm. So they don't get particularly dirty. My foot was itching quite a lot yesterday though, so this may not be ideal.
- morninglight 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AOeL-QgDco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AOeL-QgDco
jerf 3y ago
> be gwern > notice I don't have socks > write 10,000+ words on not having socks > four years later > still haven't bought socks I believe there's a sci-fi/fantasy novel by Alan Dean Foster in which he writes about a trap in a standard dungeon on a mountain which is a path that just very slowly gets steeper and steeper. At first, you don't think you need anything to deal with it, so you're not in mountaineering gear, but at some point you've been gradually lulled into walking down a path you can no longer return up. I don't think it would work in real life but it was a neat idea. In particular, I don't think it works if you can easily see out ahead of you. But in real life, there's plenty of cases like this where you either can't see out ahead of you, or it's too cognitively expensive, or it simply never crosses your mind to think. I think a lot of the subtle controls exerted in society are like this... you are gradually corralled into doing things you never would have agreed to do if asked baldly, or if you could see that's where you were going to end up, but one step at a time you slowly walked somewhere you never would have voluntarily gone until it would be very expensive to get back out, and it's easier just to take the next step down. While I sometimes wonder if this is deliberately done, it is also certainly a situation that can arise naturally in many cases. Investing has a lot of cases like this... it's really easy to be unwilling to accept a loss or something and take the next step down the road of losing more, when you should pay the price, bail out, and accept the initial loss.
- necubi 3y ago
  In real life this tends to happen in reverse (climbing a mountain rather than descending), since it's generally easier to go up than go down. Reading accident reports, a common theme is people setting on what they think is a class 3 or 4 hike, getting lost and ending up on a class 5 technical climb. With a gradual transition from class 4 scrambling to class 5 slab (less than vertical) climbing you can very quickly get to a place where it would be dangerous to descend.
- jefftk 3y ago
  > still haven't bought socks Am I missing something? The intro paragraph includes that he "immediately went on Amazon & bought a pack of 30 pairs".
causi 3y ago
This should not be a hard problem. All my socks are identical and they have their own drawer. When a sock gets a hole in it I throw it away. When the drawer starts looking sparse I pull out my phone and add another 12-pack to my next grocery order.
Aeolun 3y ago
I think it’s more that I know I ordered 10 pairs of socks half a year ago, and I know I threw 3 pairs out, but I somehow have only a single pair left. I don’t want to buy a new set because I refuse to believe 5 pairs of socks vanished into thin air…
grogenaut 3y ago
In 2003 I bought a gross of socks from bulk-bargain-sock-sales.com which sadly is no longer with us. A paypal checkout and $60 got me a gross of dress socks and a gross of athletic. Took me till 2013 to run out of the athletics, I'm 1/8th of the way through the dress. I did one more re-up on the athletics (my daily driver). and am now buying off amazon in large packs. I basically have hiking socks (all rei), dress socks (all the same), athletics (all the same), and specialty socks like hand knit and or snowboarding. It's great. I just chuck out socks and pull new ones from the bag. I played ball in college. They'd give us a new set of socks before every game. It was such a nice small luxury. I have that again. A gross of socks doesn't take up that much space (1' cube) in storage. If you have the space I recommend it and just chuck or goodwill all of your non-compliant socks.
- leoedin 3y ago
  For anyone wondering, a gross is 144.
  - grogenaut 3y ago
    I always thought it was a dozen dozen
pbyte13 3y ago
https://darntough.com/ https://darntough.com/
et-al 3y ago
This Karim Rashid quote stood out to me when I was a teenager: > Own 30 pairs of same color socks and 30 pairs of the same colored underwear so that socks always match, and do your laundry every month. Not that I follow it to a T, but I think there's something about standardizing everyday items to reduce the mental load. Similar to tupperware: only own two container sizes so everything nests nicely and you're never left searching for the odd lid.
Lapsa 3y ago
they just disappear!
jhwhite 3y ago
I usually don't have enough socks. I did just buy 3 more pair from Darn Tough though. It's funny, long time ago, back in my bachelor days I definitely didn't have enough socks, and wouldn't take time after work to go get some. So I would go sockless on the way to work in the morning, buy some from Target to wear for the day. Then do that each day until the weekend when I would wash my clothes. Then that eventually got me enough socks to get through the week.
tigerlily 3y ago
Any Americans here had any luck/experience with whistling kettles?
zvolsky 3y ago
To anyone looking for a pragmatic solution to a sock shortage, I can't recommend this1 24-pack enough. Unlike most socks that pretend to be 100% cotton, these actually are, which means they aren't as durable as plastic alternatives, and feature a seam that can get in the way, but they provide unparalleled comfort. Especially if you don't mind going through multiple pairs on busy days. 1 https://socksnob.co.uk/product/6-pairs-mens-thin-soft-100-cotton-socks/ https://socksnob.co.uk/product/6-pairs-mens-thin-soft-100-co...
this_steve_j 3y ago
I’m an older man who doesn’t use his feet very hard, and I came here to say that I just bought another pair of Sockwell moderate compression socks. 40% merino, looks awesome, feels awesome, and not so much of the Precious Bodily Fluid pooling in lower extremities. I will also +1 the Darn Tough socks. There is an appreciable difference between $6 and $26 for a pair in terms of moisture performance and comfort. Washing them in a garment bag makes it easier to re-sort.

67 points by hacb 3y ago

My wife and I used to spend a lots of time pairing socks for the family after laundry. We hated it. When my son started picking up clothes and socks for himself to ware everyday, he picked any two socks, no bother to pair at all. We tried several times teaching him to find matching socks but we failed. Now everyone in the family wares unmatched socks… the little one changed our family :D I am wondering whether the kids will start pairing socks when he and his older sister grow up to teenagers and start paying attention to their appearances.

moogly 3y ago

I realized at the young age of 35 that most socks are much more comfortable to wear inside-out, to avoid the seam from chafing against your toes. So I've been doing that ever since. Now, in latter years I've found some socks that are properly designed, with the seam not at the toe tips but rather on the top of the socks.

slotrans 3y ago

Buy high-quality merino/nylon socks (Smartwool, Darn Tough, etc) and you will not have this problem. I have pairs that have lasted 10 years and are still going strong. Yes, they're expensive compared to the usual cotton stuff. It's because they're better.

ano-ther 3y ago

Clearly an important problem for mankind. In Switzerland there is a sock subscription service: https://www.blacksocks.com/ https://www.blacksocks.com/

vgalin 3y ago
Interestingly, they have a "barcode" system that allow them (and allow us) to know the age of a given sock. "Blacksocks knows the age of all socks" https://www.blacksocks.com/en/ageofthesocksen https://www.blacksocks.com/en/ageofthesocksen

bugmen0t 3y ago

So, what's the solution to pairing socks? Buying many pairs from the same. Sure. That makes sense. But what happens when half of them are lost or damaged and you can't buy the same kind? Do you end up as someone pairing socks again or do you throw away half of your socks?

OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Even nice socks are pretty cheap. Time spent thinking about socks is almost certainly negatively valued due to when factoring in opportunity costs. So yeah, toss the orphan socks.
rodnim 3y ago
You can always demote the other half of socks to cleaning supplies. They are really useful to stick your hand into and start going to all those hard to reach places all around the house, gathering dust. When done, just turn them inside out to trap the dust inside and THEN throw them away. Just make sure to clean them first. :)
mr_mitm 3y ago
If you rotate your socks appropriately the other half is probably about to be damaged anyway, so just throw them out. The savings on using each sock until the very end are marginal.
ianbooker 3y ago
Color. I only buy socks in colors or patterns I do not own. Super simple.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
eschneider 3y ago
I tend to get white socks or black socks. Over time, yes, different brands are not an exact match but in general, it's close enough for me and I just don't worry about it.
3y ago

pantulis 3y ago

In order to avoid the effort of pairing socks, I once had the genius idea of buying them all the same colors. Then all hell broke loose as the color may be the same, but they were from different pairs still and so became more difficult to pair: you will lose an individual sock but not a pair. I stopped losing socks as I began buying them in bright colors so pairs where trivial to spot in all the sock journey during laundry.

misnome 3y ago
I lay out all of my black socks in a spectrum, and then pair to their neighbouring sock. Probably not efficient, but can be therapeutic.
- ArekDymalski 3y ago
  Excellent comment. Sounds like an introduction to "Zen and the art of socks maintenance". HN is the only place find such gems.
basscomm 3y ago
I solved that problem by doing a bulk buy of 20 pairs of socks that were all the same color and same style from one manufacturer.
- reneherse 3y ago
  This worked for me for awhile. Eventually it becomes necessary to pair them by level of wear, which is tedious, but you can cull the worst from the pile, or start over with an entirely new bunch.
wodenokoto 3y ago
Huh, I was considering going the other way. I was hoping HN knew the holy grail of high quality, ambidextrous, single color socks
- rawgabbit 3y ago

washywashy 3y ago

You can never have enough. Keeping the ones with small holes is even somewhat useful

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

I’m not sure, I think people might be over complicating socks. I have an O(n) pairing process that is about the same complexity as if I had the same socks all the time. If I encounter a sock I haven’t paired, it’s laid flat somewhere clean. Then when I pick up a sock I can do a visual o(1) lookup to find a pair, otherwise it’s laid flat where the others are. Eventually the unpaired socks are first examined if I didn’t miss any, and then are tossed if they’re just lost a pair.

Epa095 3y ago
I use the same, but for me it's definitely n^2, because the visual lookup is not constant. Some of the problem might be that I am old, stupid, and slow, but also because I (stupidly) have a lot of socks that look quite similar, but are not the same. Sometimes I even have to lift them up and feel them to notice that they are different!
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  If you have texturally distinct socks, pairing in bright light can help with this. You can also have a “sense-memory” because you touched that socks when you cached it, so if you have visually similar but textually different socks, you can still perform a quick lookup with touch-memory.
- michaelt 3y ago
  I hear a lot of people saying "buy all identical socks" to simplify pairing, but I use the opposite strategy. Buy colourful, distinctively patterned socks like [1] and pairing them up is trivial. [1] https://www.johnlewis.com/happy-socks-classic-pattern-print-socks-pack-of-5-multi/p6340126 https://www.johnlewis.com/happy-socks-classic-pattern-print-...
klausa 3y ago
You either have a very small amount of socks, or a very good spatial memory to be able to claim the visual lookup of socks on the surface is O(1). With my brain, it's closer to O(n!). (This is the worst, nerdiest collection of sentences I've written in my life.)

adityaathalye 3y ago

I accidentally solved this problem by entirely side-stepping socks, because I could, because I switched from management to programming, and I don't live in a cold country. For about a decade now, I've worn open sandals pretty much everywhere and for almost every occasion. The few times I've had to wear socks (because, dress shoes), I've found some pairs handy in my closet.

bottom999mottob 3y ago
This might be the play. I avoid wearing socks and closed-toe shoes as much as I can, but I've found many people in the West are disgusted by the sight of feet. Cloud slippers are heavenly.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Sandals are super popular in the west
- GuB-42 3y ago
  I also know people who hate open-toe shoes for the lack of protection.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    https://www.amazon.com/N-Y-L-Breathable-Protective-wear-Resistant-Construction/dp/B07S1GWFVP https://www.amazon.com/N-Y-L-Breathable-Protective-wear-Resi... Whether that is a steel toe sandal or a shoe with big holes is left to the reader.
    - pasc1878 3y ago
      Depends what protection you are after. I need to really clean my shows as it was very muddy and I was not expecting to go that way so not wering my fully waterproff hiking boots. Yes sandals are easier to clean but won't fell as comforatble
- throwaway1777 3y ago

Jedd 3y ago

There's a few comments - seemingly from our American friends - that seem to suggest that left / right socks are a thing. I'm hoping I'm parsing those comments poorly, but ever since the revelation that Americans don't have kettles, I'm prepared for the worst. I got fed up with poor socks a few years ago and embarked on a project to try to find the best, or at least consistently decent, work socks. That's work in the sense of stomping around in the workshop or outdoors, in heavy duty boots, spending most of my day standing up or moving around -- not work as in sitting at a chair for 8h while wearing mildly uncomfortable but aesthetically appropriate footwear, occasionally shuffling around a carpeted floor, etc. Anyway, that was basically a despairing effort. Unsurprisingly, everyone claiming to have the best socks did not, in fact, have the best socks. I did end up with a stack of hard-yakka bamboo socks, which were surprisingly comfortable when worn with big heavy blundstone boots, but about a year after discovering (and building up quite a large collection) I moved to hard-yakka boots, and then found out that the combination of their bamboo socks with their boots would result in a very uncomfortable bunching of sock around the ankle. Bonds - very popular purveyors of socks and daks and other necessities here in Straya - have some work socks that I've since settled on, though a top-up purchase made a few months ago suggest they've changed their recipe from ~18 months back, feels like a higher ratio of nylon to cotton, but alas no record was maintained of the first tranche, so I am wary, but so far satisfied. (For actual day-job work socks, Bonds here also do a range of basic-black that come in 3-pair sets, which have tiny lines of primary colours along the toes, red, green, blue, etc - originally I thought that was quite twee as it would help maintain pairs, but in practice it just feels like a way to shift more product - as there's no reason, beyond obsession, to match 'miscoloured stripe' pairs, but when one of a pair inevitably expires, you're then left with the difficult decision of committing fully to going pairless in the sock drawer, or throwing away a perfectly fine sock out of sympathy.)

tuatoru 3y ago
> best socks You want to check out backpacking gear review sites like Outdoor Gear Lab, Section Hiker, or for the most authoritative data, Backpacking Light ($). In the mean time, try searching for Darn Tough, Silverlight Socks or Smartwool for boot socks. The longstanding English manufacturer Bridgedale must have been taken over by MBAs recently because it is being marketed heavily. Their socks may be fine; I don't know. Then there is Injinji, and other two-layer (inner and outer) and toe-separated sock systems more generally. I like Injinji's sport sock (once I got over the look of my feet in socks with five separate toes). Injinji has a range of socks made from different textiles. All of these use wool/synthetic blends, with the synthetic usually some form of nylon. Silverlight's nylon is coated with silver for antimicrobial properties (reduced stink). I have just placed an order for a five-pack. (I also spend up to 10.5 hours a day on my feet in boots.) For non-wool, thinner socks I use Drymax, which are aimed at the running/athletics crowd. I've found them very durable (used them quite a bit for tramping (NZ-ish for bushwalking/hiking) and very easy-care. They are not left-right differentiated though.

emodendroket 3y ago

I have the opposite problem: I feel I'm running out of socks and buy them too often. If only this carried over to other aspects of maintenance I'd be in business.

not_the_fda 3y ago

I buy socks every 6 months, I have summer socks and winter socks. All the summer socks are the same color and brand, same with the winter. When I buy the next seasons socks I give the old ones to charity. I buy 14 pairs at a time. No pairing problem, and I always have socks.

wand3r 3y ago
I buy them at Marshalls and TJ Max and if you notice, a lot of the socks are mixed pairs. 6 pairs but each pair has a different logo on it. There are only a few that are all the same in a single pack.

bravura 3y ago

Thorlo Padded socks are amazing. I own maybe 8 pairs of their thick padded crew socks in black, which are versatile and great. e.g. for boots. Their padded ankle socks are great for sneakers + sport. And then I collect non-Thorlo beautiful colorful socks for dress shoes. There hasn't been much handwringing in my life about socks since I adopted this approach.

FredPret 3y ago

How to solve socks: 1. For each type of sock you need, find only one you like best, perhaps on Amazon or at Costco 2. Get a container for each kind - I have the soft shell travel zipup kind. 3. Buy en masse and stuff each container. 4. Don’t let anyone in your house discover your sock nirvana You never have to match pairs again

willcipriano 3y ago
My version. Buy these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09SP4GGWJ?psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09SP4GGWJ?psc=1 End of list.
- jtbayly 3y ago
  "for homeless" socks. I never knew such things existed. P.S. You aren't, by chance, homeless, are you?
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    No, they are just the cheapest socks I could find.
    - crooked-v 3y ago
      Buying the cheapest socks you can find is a great way to pay more in the long run than buying higher-quality socks.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        I pay 50 cents per sock. At the rate they get lost this is more economical in my experience. At three dollars a sock you need to get 6x the uses to break even and even those are considered cheap socks by some.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Pretty much. Even if you somehow run out, in the absolute worst case of "you need to buy another batch and they are different" then * you only need to pull 3 socks to have at least 2 of them match * they are black anyway, not like someone will notice. And if they do, tell them to keep their feet fetish in check

jimmaswell 3y ago

As a male programmer, at home I like to wear "programmer socks", as the meme goes: https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/031/279/Screen_Shot_2019-09-26_at_1.07.31_PM.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/031/279/Scr... Anyone else?

deleted 3y ago
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codr7 3y ago

(define-solver yak-solver () (wax-car (car-needs-waxing have-hose) (car-waxed) (car-needs-waxing)) (get-new-hose (have-ez-pass) (have-hose)) (borrow-ez-pass (return-mooshi-pillow) (have-ez-pass)) (fix-mooshi-pillow (have-yak) (return-mooshi-pillow)) (visit-zoo () (have-yak))) (multiple-value-bind (ok? actions) (yak-solver '(car-needs-waxing) '(car-waxed)) (assert ok?) (assert (equal actions '(VISIT-ZOO FIX-MOOSHI-PILLOW BORROW-EZ-PASS GET-NEW-HOSE WAX-CAR)))))

codr7 3y ago
https://github.com/codr7/cl-ps https://github.com/codr7/cl-ps

fmajid 3y ago

I buy Falke socks en masse whenever on sale and have ample stock of unused socks available (at the moment about a dozen pairs) for use whenever I have to retire a pair because it is worn out or lost its mate. Small things, but like shoes or mattresses, comfortable socks make a huge difference to your quality of life given how much of your life you spend in them.

ilaksh 3y ago

I don't usually wear much clothing because I rarely go out. Like maybe once or twice a month maximum do I need to leave the apartment complex. When it gets chilly (which half the time is the AC) sometimes I put socks on though. Its probably been about a week since I washed my socks. I have mainly been putting on the same (usually dirty) pair for the last three months. Often dirty for three weeks or more. But only for a little while usually because then my feet get too warm. So they don't get particularly dirty. My foot was itching quite a lot yesterday though, so this may not be ideal.

morninglight 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AOeL-QgDco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AOeL-QgDco

jerf 3y ago

> be gwern > notice I don't have socks > write 10,000+ words on not having socks > four years later > still haven't bought socks I believe there's a sci-fi/fantasy novel by Alan Dean Foster in which he writes about a trap in a standard dungeon on a mountain which is a path that just very slowly gets steeper and steeper. At first, you don't think you need anything to deal with it, so you're not in mountaineering gear, but at some point you've been gradually lulled into walking down a path you can no longer return up. I don't think it would work in real life but it was a neat idea. In particular, I don't think it works if you can easily see out ahead of you. But in real life, there's plenty of cases like this where you either can't see out ahead of you, or it's too cognitively expensive, or it simply never crosses your mind to think. I think a lot of the subtle controls exerted in society are like this... you are gradually corralled into doing things you never would have agreed to do if asked baldly, or if you could see that's where you were going to end up, but one step at a time you slowly walked somewhere you never would have voluntarily gone until it would be very expensive to get back out, and it's easier just to take the next step down. While I sometimes wonder if this is deliberately done, it is also certainly a situation that can arise naturally in many cases. Investing has a lot of cases like this... it's really easy to be unwilling to accept a loss or something and take the next step down the road of losing more, when you should pay the price, bail out, and accept the initial loss.

necubi 3y ago
In real life this tends to happen in reverse (climbing a mountain rather than descending), since it's generally easier to go up than go down. Reading accident reports, a common theme is people setting on what they think is a class 3 or 4 hike, getting lost and ending up on a class 5 technical climb. With a gradual transition from class 4 scrambling to class 5 slab (less than vertical) climbing you can very quickly get to a place where it would be dangerous to descend.
jefftk 3y ago
> still haven't bought socks Am I missing something? The intro paragraph includes that he "immediately went on Amazon & bought a pack of 30 pairs".

causi 3y ago

This should not be a hard problem. All my socks are identical and they have their own drawer. When a sock gets a hole in it I throw it away. When the drawer starts looking sparse I pull out my phone and add another 12-pack to my next grocery order.

Aeolun 3y ago

I think it’s more that I know I ordered 10 pairs of socks half a year ago, and I know I threw 3 pairs out, but I somehow have only a single pair left. I don’t want to buy a new set because I refuse to believe 5 pairs of socks vanished into thin air…

grogenaut 3y ago

In 2003 I bought a gross of socks from bulk-bargain-sock-sales.com which sadly is no longer with us. A paypal checkout and $60 got me a gross of dress socks and a gross of athletic. Took me till 2013 to run out of the athletics, I'm 1/8th of the way through the dress. I did one more re-up on the athletics (my daily driver). and am now buying off amazon in large packs. I basically have hiking socks (all rei), dress socks (all the same), athletics (all the same), and specialty socks like hand knit and or snowboarding. It's great. I just chuck out socks and pull new ones from the bag. I played ball in college. They'd give us a new set of socks before every game. It was such a nice small luxury. I have that again. A gross of socks doesn't take up that much space (1' cube) in storage. If you have the space I recommend it and just chuck or goodwill all of your non-compliant socks.

leoedin 3y ago
For anyone wondering, a gross is 144.
- grogenaut 3y ago
  I always thought it was a dozen dozen

pbyte13 3y ago

https://darntough.com/ https://darntough.com/

et-al 3y ago

This Karim Rashid quote stood out to me when I was a teenager: > Own 30 pairs of same color socks and 30 pairs of the same colored underwear so that socks always match, and do your laundry every month. Not that I follow it to a T, but I think there's something about standardizing everyday items to reduce the mental load. Similar to tupperware: only own two container sizes so everything nests nicely and you're never left searching for the odd lid.

Lapsa 3y ago

they just disappear!

jhwhite 3y ago

I usually don't have enough socks. I did just buy 3 more pair from Darn Tough though. It's funny, long time ago, back in my bachelor days I definitely didn't have enough socks, and wouldn't take time after work to go get some. So I would go sockless on the way to work in the morning, buy some from Target to wear for the day. Then do that each day until the weekend when I would wash my clothes. Then that eventually got me enough socks to get through the week.

tigerlily 3y ago

Any Americans here had any luck/experience with whistling kettles?

zvolsky 3y ago

To anyone looking for a pragmatic solution to a sock shortage, I can't recommend this1 24-pack enough. Unlike most socks that pretend to be 100% cotton, these actually are, which means they aren't as durable as plastic alternatives, and feature a seam that can get in the way, but they provide unparalleled comfort. Especially if you don't mind going through multiple pairs on busy days. 1 https://socksnob.co.uk/product/6-pairs-mens-thin-soft-100-cotton-socks/ https://socksnob.co.uk/product/6-pairs-mens-thin-soft-100-co...

this_steve_j 3y ago

I’m an older man who doesn’t use his feet very hard, and I came here to say that I just bought another pair of Sockwell moderate compression socks. 40% merino, looks awesome, feels awesome, and not so much of the Precious Bodily Fluid pooling in lower extremities. I will also +1 the Darn Tough socks. There is an appreciable difference between $6 and $26 for a pair in terms of moisture performance and comfort. Washing them in a garment bag makes it easier to re-sort.