Recently, we came up with a crazy idea. We think that your sock is traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of cotton and polyester, but of laundry detergent. A journey into a wondrous machine whose boundaries are beyond that of imagination. That’s the fabric selector dial up ahead. Your sock’s next stop: The Twilight (Sock) Zone.
The modern day mystery of the missing sock
The dilemma of disappearing socks is nothing new. If they had worn such footwear, presumably even the ancient Romans would have lost some socks in their urine-based laundering facilities.
As it is, the mystery of the missing socks has been the subject of several books, inspired a spoof site called LOSS — Laundered and Orphaned Sock Society — from appliance manufacturer GE (now offline), spawned the marginally more serious Bureau of Missing Socks website, and was even the subject of one of Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up routines. You can watch the video here:
The possibilities
Where do all the missing socks go? Sadly, the answers we discovered were far less interesting than we hoped — namely, we could find no proof that house elves or magic were in any way involved.
Through diligent research and experimentation, here are what we think are the more likely explanations for this phenomena:
- The pair never made it into the washing machine together in the first place, and the errant sock is hiding in the toy basket or behind some furniture.
- A sock got swept into the little space(s) around the washing machine’s agitator.
- The little guy might be hiding in the gap between the tub and drum (usually near the top of a front-loading machine).
- Small items in the laundry can slip between the tub and the drum, work their way down, and get sucked into the drain pump — and either stop there, or go out with the rest of the wastewater.
- Socks can sometimes get sucked into the dryer filter or vent ducting.
- Both with and without the help of static cling, socks like to hide in other articles of clothing (particularly pant legs) and in linens (especially the corners of fitted sheets, pillowcases and duvet covers).
The solution: SOLOSOCKS
SOLOSOCKS are the answer to your prayers. The company was established in Copenhagen in 2016 based on the problem of missing socks. Coming from big families, our founders were tired of pairing socks during each laundry session. Why was it that socks kept on going missing? After a ton of research, they realized that there was no explanation. Socks simply just disappear.
