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Abundance of Socks

68 Comments

When I was getting dressed yesterday, I pulled open my sock drawer (although it’s a huge bin actually) and found a new pair of socks laying on top of the others.

Now I know for a fact that these socks belonged to YA: when she was laid up with her broken foot, I did all her laundry, including sock sorting. I really liked them and I may even have said that if she ever gets tired of them, I would take them.

I have way too many socks. Socks are like cookie cutters and flip flops in my view… as long as you don’t have a anything exactly the same, why not add to your collection.  I have enough socks that I have them sorted out, with the holiday red/green socks in a separate section.  This is why my sock drawer is the same size as my t-shirt drawer.

This overabundance of socks is something I recognize, in fact I told YA NOT to get me socks for Solstice this year. I really just don’t need more.

So why am I happily wearing the adopted socks today? They are comfy and warm and I love the pattern.  Do I need any other reason?

What do you have too many of?

68 thoughts on “Abundance of Socks”

  1. I have three lefse griddles. Two would be enough, since I can roll and fry and flip in an efficient, coordinated fashion so that I can use two at a time. Three griddles may be a sign of neurosis.

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        1. Oh I think you know you’re preaching to the choir here Renee. As I have two of several things for the exact same reason. But I think were in the minority.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Yeah, but Renee you have not seen my kitchen. I have no place to store a lefse griddle except in that row of cabinets I’ve never opened because they are so high I could never possibly reach them.

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        4. Too much fishing tackle? Sure! When I was a member of the Outdoor Writer’s Association of America, tackle manufacturers sent me free stuff, hoping I would use it so my comments and photos would provide advertising of the most desirable sort (didn’t look like advertising). I got several hundred dollars worth of musky baits and ice fishing rods. I didn’t fish for muskies, nor did I fish through the ice.

          One day I read an article in the Strib about a black kid who fished at least one of the Mpls city lakes every day. I tracked him down and showed up at his house with several hundred dollars worth of graphite fishing rods. I figured he would be more likely to use them than I.

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  2. I’ve got an overflowing sock drawer too. And I got four new pairs for Christmas. But they don’t take up a lot of room – not like down vests or cable knit sweaters. I also have lots and lots of earrings.

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    2. I own a fair number of socks but don’t feel as if I do because so many of the pairs are socks I don’t like. Either their too short, don’t stay up on my calves, are too itchy, or are wearing out. And I’ve yet to find the perfect all-weather sock–warm in winter, cool in the heat, stylish, long-lasting, good cushioning. etc. All those sock details we sometimes take for granted. But then again, I like trading off colors, styles, and thicknesses. But I’m not one of those people who wear outrageous or colorful socks to make some sort of fashion statement.

      Chris in Owatonna

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  3. I inherited far too many socket sets and hundreds of neatly sorted screws, nails, bolts, nuts, and washers from my father. I will never be able to use them.

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  4. I have too few of almost everything, especially dollars, but I’ll admit to having too many knives. While I love sharp knives, for most of my life I was unable to put a good edge on a knife. When my knives got dull, I would buy a new sharp one. That strategy had two consequences: I ended up with many knives, too many knives, and only the newest were sharp. Pretty soon I was obliged to hide the sharpest knives to protect them, including protecting them from myself. In my kitchen, any knife that is visible and accessible is sure to be dull. The sharp ones all live in places few people would think to look, even me. Like anything in life that seems insane, this is all very rational when you accept the original premise.

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    1. I have this problem with scissors. Because I do paper crafting, most scissors at my house get dull quickly and then I can’t use them on ribbon and twine and string any longer. I can’t bring myself to just dump scissors and it seems ridiculous to pay more to have a pair of scissors sharpened then they cost so as a result I have lots of scissors but only one that I protect for ribbon and twine. It’s in my studio, hidden from everyone else but me.

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  5. I think we have too many snow shovels. Husband buys different shovels for different kinds of snow. The ironic thing is that we rarely shovel and just drive through whatever is on the driveway, so that our driveway is usually an icy, snowy mess in the winter.

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    1. I like that—the conceptual and abstract need for shovels, is a nice contrast with the refusal to actually use them. I have found myself doing this with candles and candle holders. For awhile I was buying candles which I never used. I finally donated most of them and stopped buying them.

      Yesterday I saw “Little Women.” All I could think about with the kerosene lanterns and candles was the fire hazard!

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      2. A common cause of injury or death in that period was from women’s garments catching fire. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but from the stills, it looks as if the costumes on the girls are not extreme in the use of crinolines or cage crinolines. That’s appropriate for in-home situation as opposed to street wear or ballroom settings. There still would have been multiple layers of flammable undergarments. Especially in the case of cage crinolines, one’s dress circumference could be quite large. Imagine having to keep constant awareness of your perimeter in an era of open flame.

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    2. We just bought a new snow shovel last week. Our original snow shovels are all nubby and rounded at the edges and don’t do much for clearing snow. But a few years ago we bought something at the hardware store that is listed as the best snow shovel ever. I heartily disagree. So when I said this to the guy at the hardware store when we were looking for a new shovel he said “oh well you know you have different kinds of shovels for different kinds of snow.” I don’t like this theory at all. I want all of my snow shovels to be all purpose.

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      1. Snow shovels are like hammers; they all have specific uses. I have lots of hammers. (Family joke; my son took a trip to Canada when he was about 10 and he bought me hammer.)
        I’m shopping for a new snow shovel because we figured if we kept them back on the deck we would be inclined to shovel it off sooner than if we have to go around to the garage to get a shovel. But there are ‘pusher’ shovels and ‘lifter’ shovels. I bought a lifter but I’m still searching for the exact right “poly” pusher shovel. And not metal edge because that’s hard on the Trex decking boards.

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        1. Even when you are talking about generic claw hammers and, for that matter screwdrivers, they are cheap enough that it makes sense to have enough to have one handy wherever you need one. There’s no good reason to ever have to hammer something with anything other than a hammer.

          Liked by 3 people

  6. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Relatives. Especially on my mother’s side. Being one of 39 grandchildren is a very overwhelming experience. This was especially true given our parents’ very lax supervision habits when everyone was together.

    I don’t believe there ARE too many socks—this is something of which I have many, folded and tucked into plastic bins. And I Need Them All. In winter, I especially need the soft wool variety that I find at Costco. It is key to surviving cold weather.

    Today I own one too many recliner couches here in AZ. There is a dandy recycled furniture store here. There are always quite wealthy, elderly people here who must give up their homes due to aging and health issues. This creates a market in lightly used, high quality furniture. I hang out at my favorite store where I found, last week, a deeply discounted couch and chair with ottoman. I bought it. But before it can come to live here, we must dispose of a 90’s era recliner sofa that is so incredibly heavy that Lou and I cannot move it. We had to hire a company that can take it away and deliver it to our local Good Will store. “Little Moves” will arrive here at 9:30am to move the beast. We have used them before. They hire giant strong men to wrestle furniture down our 3 flights of stairs since our recliner sofa will not fit into the elevator.

    I hope that by the end of the day, this thing is successfully replaced.

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    1. Mission accomplished. These movers are so efficient and On Time. It is 40 degrees here today, and the movers showed up in stocking caps and mittens. Cold is relative.

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      1. Husband is dreading his trip to the rez tomorrow as the windchill will be in the -30 range this week. He has this electromagnetic heater that he can attach to his truck oil pan which he intends to use so we don’t have a repeat of last year and the refusal of anyone to actually drive to the rez and help him with a truck that was froze up. His frost-bit fingers from last year are still tender and sensitive to the cold.

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    1. Me too; Drawer full of socks, all black. The only minor issue was when it needed to get some compression socks. They’re black too. So I made a little divider so I can put those socks over there.

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    2. Most of Husband’s socks are black, but not all work for all shoes, in his opinion, so he is invariably slowed down in the morning finding just the right black socks for the shoes he intends to wear.

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        2. But, the socks must be of the appropriate formality or casualness to also go with formality or casualness of his shirt and trousers, and be appropriate for the weather.

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  8. My favorite socks are cotton rag socks in funky contrasting colors from Menards, of all places. Our local Menards doesn’t carry them any more so I got some wool blend ones from Runnings, our version of Mills/FleetFarm. They will be ok until summer.

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  9. Many outside observers would suggest I have too many books. Robin sometimes infers that and I diplomatically don’t bring up her yarn stash. I don’t know what that means. It’s not as if any two books are interchangeable. Certainly, I have more books than I’m capable of reading in my remaining lifetime and if I knew which ones I am going to want to read or reread in that time, I suppose I could get rid of the rest. As it is, my reading just sort of flows from my curiosity about one subject or question to another and, often as not, I have just the book at hand to satisfy that curiosity.

    If my reading habits centered on the sort of popular material in which the library specializes, I suppose I could rely more on borrowed books but invariably when I go looking at the library, the book I want has to come from elsewhere or it’s not available at all. That interrupts the flow of my reading so that, by the time the book is at hand, I’ve already moved on to some new quest.

    Because many of the books I read are available as reprints or online in the public domain, I could read them there, but those books are soulless ghosts with none of the tactile pleasure of a tangible, original volume and besides the online versions are just scans of the printed book and clunky to read online.

    I also probably have too many art supplies in too many mediums and too many tools for too many kinds of projects but, as with my books, I like to keep my options open.

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    2. I’m not trying to be a smart ass here, but I’m wondering if the word “infers” in the second line should be “implies”? I always have to think about it when I’m using either to make sure I’m using the right one. In this case I would have used “implies,” would I be wrong?

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  11. I have about175 lbs of flour in my house. I don’t think it is too much, but some people might. I have 50 lbs of artisan flour, 50 lbs of Swany White Flour from Freeport, MN, 30 lbs of King Arthur regular white all purpose flour, and innumerable varieties of rye and specialty flours. We bake.

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  12. Apparently too many things on the calendar – it was a day when I barely had time to sit down. Reading through, it’s amazing what a dozen-odd baboons can find to talk about around socks in 48 comments.

    I am one who probably has too many socks, but like others, I like having variety of color, thickness, calf height, etc. I even has a basket of holey socks in the basement in case I ever get the urge to do hours (nay, days) of darning. (Remember darning? Anyone else have a darning ball?)

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  13. I have too many items on my to do list
    When I get 3 done 6 more sneak in. And this darn ideas … they keep coming. And those interesting shiny objects to distract me over here … no over here … no over here

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