Let’s put this missing sock thing to rest once and for all.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Mindless: Yup!

Pointless: Check!

Gotta say it?: Who doesn’t?

This weekend I did my laundry. It was a load of dark stuff.
I also decided to wash my ONLY pair of gray socks. Since they were an after thought, I put them on top of the load that had already started, all other clothes were black or dark brown. When the load was finished, I hung the clothes out to dry. On the line directly behind me, that is, grab a garment, turn around 90 degrees and hang it up, no gathering up a bunch of clothes and taking them to the dryer, so nothing could have been dropped on the way, no one else was home so no one is playing tricks on me. Well, when all was hung up, I only had *ONE GREY SOCK! * Amazing no? I checked the pants I washed, not in the pockets or washed into a leg. Not wrapped up in a shirt or something. All other socks had their “mates”. The only thing I can think is that it was washed up over the top of the spinning basket and is stuck in between the tank and the basket. I’m not ready to disassemble my washing machine (yet) but there is a gasket like thing there that would preclude this and it was not a full load so the water level never went that high. So the age old question appears again,
WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL THE MISSING SOCKS!
A quick search on GOOGLE returned 42,300 responses to that particular question including the first link to The Bureau of Missing Socks but alas, they have no REAL answers. So where do you think all the missing socks went? My sanity is in your hands.

2

According to my old Readers’ Digest “How to Fix Everything,” your grey sock is probably swimming in the great brown river underground. Occasionally, a wad of them will get stuck within the washer, but that results in a no-drain condition.

Some blame lost socks on washer overload; others cite wanderlust and sibling conflicts. One thing’s sure. If you zip your socks into a net “lingerie bag” before washing, you’ll get them all back.

Sorry about your sock.

3

Sure, AskNott, be logical about it. :rolleyes: :wink:

I have it on good authority another Reader’s Digest article, I’m fairly certain that missing socks are eaten by clothes hangers which is, of course, why hangers seem to multiply like rabbits.

4

It has fallen into Shadow…

5

It has fallen into Shadow…

6

It’s a quantum effect.

Socks are one of the Eigenstates of fluff. They are categorized by three independent states, clean/dirty, inside-out/rightside-out and argyle/plain. Whenever the equivalent amount of lint builds up in a dryer trap, somewhere in the world a sock disappears.

Attempts to duplicate this phenomenon under laboratory conditions are ongoing.

7

Missing socks enter the Spacewarp, which is where toddlers and pets hide all those missing important articles (like your keys) that they are so good at removing from the ordinary sections of space/time.

Of course, such items can only be retrieved from the Spacewarp again by nonverbal beings such as toddlers and pets. So perhaps you should borrow a 2-year-old, who will then be able to produce your missing grey sock in a matter of moments.

Hey, it’s always worked for ME.

8

A buddy of mine called me because his Maytag washer had exhibited screeching and stinkage, primary indicators that Mr. Drum Belt was filing for divorce, and taking Little Pump Belt with him. Mrs. Drum was suffering from fluid retention.

With new belts installed, the tub pumped down, but would not go into spin, the drum belt making angry noises again. It was then that I discovered a tiny piece of cloth, on which I pulled while working the drum back and forth. Finally, I produced the offending garment causal to the entire affair. One silky colored pair of his wife’s knickers had gone over the side and got chewed up between the inner and outer tubs.

These panties looked like they’d been attacked by a rabid rottweiler, so as I held them up, I looked him and said, “Glad to see the spark is still in your marriage, pal.”

He almost peed his pants. :smiley:

Perhaps your sock is in a similar land, yet if it was not a full load, I can’t see how it would get UP there.

9

Did you recently start living with someone? I never, ever lost a sock until I foolishly let someone move in.

10

The only way to find the missing sock is to throw away its mate.

11

And not to hijack, but there is a reverse of The Sock Effect ™, I call it The Hanger Paradox™. I have never, ever, purchased clothes hangers and I dress like a scarecrow so dry-cleaning has never been a part of my life. Yet I have a closet full of hangers! I think that they are breeding.

12

Lainaf is almost correct. However, this method will not work unless you throw away its mate such that it is not in any way retrievable. The mate will not show if there’s any chance you could re-unite the pair.

Putting it another way, the original missing sock will only turn up as and when it is useless. As and when this happens, the original (which you have thrown away) becomes the missing sock, and the one that you have found becomes the odd sock. This preserves the principle of Universal Sock Non-parity which is not only one of the most well-established principles in all of science, but was also the title of a small leaflet Einstein was working on at the time of his passing.

Incidentally, fans of the Fortean Times tend to blame this kind of thing on small creatures called Boggarts. You can never see or detect Boggarts directly, but you can detect their activity. Chiefly, this consists of hiding things from you and then, after an interval which could be anything from a minute to several years, returning them. Boggarts are the reason why things which you have only just put down, RIGHT THERE!!!, can suddenly go missing, even when this is clearly impossible by any normal means.

I don’t think the existence of boggarts can be proved in a scientific sense, but I think it’s fairly clear they, or something equivalent, is at work in the world and only a fool could deny it. I had a copy of Fortean Times which explained all this, but it seems to have gone missing… which is a bit rum, given that it was clearly lying on the table by the bed, it was the only thing there, and no-one has been near it.

13

Socks are inherently unstable and the rapid spinning of a washer or dryer can cause them to explode. In the washer the remains are then lost with the rinse water. In the dryer the remains are caught in the lint trap.

Socks, the most dangerous garment ever devised. . .

:frowning:

14

I think ianzin is right. A similar principle is in play with lipsticks. If one loses a lipstick, it will not be found. If one buys a replacement for that lipstick, the original lipstick will be found, and one will have two lipsticks of the same kind.

15

According to the eminent observer and researcher George Carlin, they are all somewhere with the macaroni and cheese.

Why the macaroni and cheese would even want socks is more than I can fathom.

16

Did you have a duvet cover in with your washing?

Once socks get lost inside duvetworld they are rarely, if ever retrieved.

Duvetworld is a great vortex of small laundry items. It has its own dimension. I believe the 70’s sci-fi series Sapphire & Steel did a whole episode on it.

17

To reinforce ianzin’s theory, I once tried to fool the cosmos by pretending to dispose of socks that had lost their mate. I threw them dismissively into what I called “the lonely sock bag”. I did this in the hope that the missing socks would reappear, thinking their partners had been destroyed, and become reunited in the bag. After three years of doing this, I emptied the bag out, and found that not one sock matched another.

18

It can be explained! Read The Quantum Theory of Laundry.

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Oops. Forgot the link

20

This was a weird post from the get go !I originally tried to post it to IMHO, and just as I sent it off, * the aliens from the planet of missing socks saw what I was doing and put the ZAP on the boards* so all I got back was “this operation timed out” errors. Hmmmm, I guess they didn’t want me to post an actual incident. I shut down my browser (saving my OP) and connected again to see if my OP had gone through (I hate to double post you know). Well, well waddia know, IT DID NOT. Huh Huh, I knew the score. So very casual like, I copied the OP using the CTRL – C method, but didn’t paste it any where, oh no, not now. I went lurking on another board, did some actual work, you know – acted like nothing was wrong. Then making like I had no intention of posting that dirty sock question I casually opened up MPSIMS, then lickedy split, I popped the “new thread” button and posted that baby! Boy were they pissed! I could hear thunder all the way from mount Olympus! Or it was time for lunch. Now here is the weird part, I got another “timed out error” and another and another, not the usual “thank you for your post blah, blah, blah”. I went back to the board and THERE WAS MY OP, *with NO page views and NO responses *. In all your time here have you EVER seen ZERO in BOTH columns? Neither have I. I guess I got that one in while the sock people were not looking! Strangely enough, right after that, I thought a cockroach was crawling on my foot because it was tingling, I looked down and my shoe was untied! I just know they were trying to teach me a lesson, stealing the one sock right off my foot, not even waiting for me to put it in the washer!

** butrscotch ** wrote:

I think your on to something here, see, the service area where the washer and clothes lines are is also where we keep our puppies! (you didn’t ask but I’ll tell you, 2 Labs, 1 black, one beige, 4 months old - I know - Awwwww) Now they meet both criteria, they are toddlers (sort of) AND they are pets. BTW a cursory check of their doo-doo revealed no gray threads or pieces of material, likewise the area where they play so I do not believe they stole it in order to have their evil puppy way with it.

** j.c. ** wrote:

Not recently, me and the Mrs. Have been at it for 13 years now, and she never lost a sock.

** ianzin ** wrote:

Now this is weird, I almost named the beige puppy
Bogart. Maybe he knows what happened to it. I’ll start the interrogation as soon as I get home.

** Rapunzel ** wrote:

What is a “duvet”?

Well the search goes on, I will not rest till I find it! Mainly because I’m to cheap to spring for a new pair of socks and also I need a project for this weekend, I think taking apart the washer (while a bit obsessive) could be rather educational.