At least in my household… While doing some troubleshooting on my top-load washing machine (goes unbalanced too often…) I opened the top of the machine (not the lid where you add clothes) to expose the drum and the support rods. Lo and behold! There were 9 socks (and a pair of boxer briefs) that had gotten between the drum and the outer body of the machine. I’m guessing from times I loaded too much laundry and pieces flew off the top of the pile.
Now it’s on to the belching toilet…
Clogged vent stack.
If you find that it’s been clogged with a sock then you’ll really be on to something. 
I still suspect thieves.
Dirty dirty pilferers are taking my socks and dainties for their own nefarious reasons.
Why…I oughta…
You may have to make a trip to SF to get them back… we saw this place late one night from a cable car.
Oddly, I’ve completely opened top-load washers twice and never found a sock. Someone in your household might be over-filling the washer.
I have pulled the dryer out to clean the vent hose and found socks on the floor behind the dryer though.
I’ve read that, but I don’t have a ladder tall enough (or cojones large enough) to get to my roof.
My mother and I used to joke about making sacrifices to the sock god.
I’ve lost fewer socks since I started making sacrifices to Anoia; Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers. She’s flexible enough to cover stuff stuck in washers and dryers too. Anoia also finds objects that roll under other objects and things stuck in sofa cushions, and is considering handling stuck zippers.
When someone rattles a drawer and cries “How can it close on the damned thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?”, it is as praise unto Anoia.
GNU Sir Pterry!
Do you burn incense, or maybe darn a sock for her?
I worship her by cursing whenever I try to unstick the drawer that’s jammed by a cheese grater.
Our current top loading washing machine uses very little water. I wash one load a week and although I know it’s “a thing”, I’ve never lost a sock.
Socks going missing in the laundry is a quantum thingie. Something about parity breaking during the spin cycle. Or maybe some kind of entanglement.
I still prefer the theory that socks are the larval form of hangers.
I solve this problem by maintaining a sock collection that is mostly a few solid colours. So the worst that can happen is that one of the colour sets contains an odd number of socks, which doesn’t bother me because I know that at some point it will either gain or lose a sock and be even again.
This infuriates the goddess Anoia who retaliates by causing other things to disappear. She particularly enjoys hiding my car keys in delightfully odd places, like the refrigerator.
Well, no wonder your drawer gets jammed, grating cheese is a sin against Aristaeus. You should know better–cheese is only to be cut.
You know the ‘light switch that does nothing?’ - everytime one of those if flipped - somewhere in the world a random sock, ink pen or reading glasses goes missing.
No, all light switches exposed to me for more than a week or two tops are determined as to what they do. I would never abide a light switch that did nothing. Is that really a thing?
Did you use to leave the clock on the VCR blinking?
You’ve clearly never lived in older/renovated apartments and buildings - it might do something in someone elses apartment.
I know what the light switch should do - it controls that receptacle on the other side of the room - but if nothing is hooked to it - it does ‘nothing’.
I’ve also been known to add a few switches to houses (as I moved out of them) - that literally do nothing - wires go nowhere more than a couple of feet - to give the new homeowner something to do.
I loved the various remote outlets and light bulbs available these days. Makes is so easy in houses where switches are either non-existent or in the wrong locations.
@Southern_Yankee, wow. Great discovery!
Were any of them Jimmy Hoffa’s socks?