How (And How Long) To Store Mateless Missing Socks

Learn how to store and organize mateless missing socks, find out how long you should hang onto them, and download free printable tags to keep them from overstaying their welcome in your laundry room.

Every laundry room has that little stash of socks that are sad and lonely because their mate either got lost on its way home from the dryer or ran off with another sock and left it all alone. And while it’s a great idea to hang onto mateless socks for a little while, eventually you need to let them go.

In today’s Quick Win Friday, I’ll show you how to store and organize your mateless socks while they wait for their MIA partner to be found, plus I’ll give you a guideline on when it’s time to call back in the search party and give up. I even made you some fun printable tags to give them an expiration date. Ready for a quick win this weekend? Let’s organize your mateless socks!

What You Need:

• A small basket, bin, or even a Tupperware container (I love these hanging baskets!)
• Clothespins
• Scissors
• Printable Mateless Sock Expiration Tags (free to download at the bottom of this post)
• Sad, lonely, mateless socks

How To Store Your Mateless Socks

1. Download and print the tags I made for you. You can choose to print the color or the grayscale option.
2. Cut out the tags on the dotted lines.
3. For each mateless sock in your stash, make a tag with today’s date, along with a date you commit to discarding them if a mate hasn’t been found.
4. Clip the tag onto the sock.
5. Store your freshly tagged socks in the basket or container of your choice in your laundry room or closet. (Keep extra blank tags and a pen nearby for new additions to the basket.)
6. Once a week, check the basket for any expired socks that still haven’t found their partner.
7. After the tag expires, either throw away or repurpose the sock for padding bottles when grocery shopping or cleaning window blinds.

How Long To Store Missing Sock Mates

The amount of time you let these sad little guys wait around to be reunited with their mate is entirely up to you. Depending on how often you do laundry and how often you deep clean your house (like moving furniture to sweep or vacuum under them), you may need to keep them longer or shorter than how other women would choose to hang onto theirs.

I personally let mine “expire” after one month. Unless it’s one of my favorites, there’s no point in keeping it longer than a month in my opinion. You can choose any time range you’d like, but I wouldn’t let it span past three months. That’s plenty enough time for the other sock to turn up. After three months max, the little monster in your dryer definitely ate it. Or your dog. But hopefully just the dryer monster.

Want More Quick Easy Wins?

Head over to my Instagram @lelaburris, where you’ll find all kinds of fast and easy organizing projects that you can knock out in an hour or less and make you feel less stressed and more Organized-ish.

And don’t forget to print out the mateless sock tags before you go. You can get them by popping your email address below. I’ll send them straight to you in both color and grayscale so you can print whichever color scheme you prefer.