Sock Monster

Two months have passed since I gave up work. Tell me, when do you suppose the house will be tidy?

Periodically, I have this daydream where I am a little old lady living in a small terraced cottage with a gated front garden and a bit of a plot at the back, a couple of trees, preferably apple and plum, some evergreen shrubs and the occasional use of next door's cat. My house is cosy, full of well-read books, heavy curtains to shut out the winter, and a log fire. Next door are very good at providing me with logs. I keep them well supplied with plum jam. And all is spick and span and it stays that way on a daily basis.

Back to reality. And socks. I've decided that socks are the bane of my life. Not only do my children discard their socks willynilly, with no thought for how they're going to make the move from floor to laundry basket; not only do socks disappear into that black hole at the back of the washing machine; not only does my sockmonsterbox have more socks in it than there are in the drawers upstairs, and not only do my children seem to think that wearing stocking-ed feet to run across wet grass is acceptable, but on top of all this I can't tell which socks belong to which child anymore.

In days gone by it was easy to sort socks - the different sized feet were sufficiently obvious to make the job simple and if that wasn't enough, Kid-the-Eldest had all the grey socks, Kid-in-the-Middle had knee high white socks and Kid-at-the-Bottom-of-the-Heap had pretty frilly things.

Now they are all at school however, the waters have been muddied as badly as the socks. Kid-in-the-Middle wanted grey socks to wear under trousers. A few washes later, it's impossible to tell which grey socks should go to which child. Kid-the-Last wanted white knee-highs like her sister. Either hers have stretched or her sister's have shrunk because they all look the same.

I'm tempted to give up folding socks and putting them back into bedrooms. Perhaps we should simply have a "Bucket o' Sox" and everyone can dive in and get what they want out of it? It might cut out some of the work involved in keeping everyone's clothes clean, dry and fit to wear. Not that I'd be gaining anything exactly: for some reason, I seem to be spending quite a bit of time laundering the clothes of Other People's Children. They come here, play for a bit, eat my cakes, and what, strip off? I've got a box in the hall full of socks, pants, jeans, jumpers, quite a nice Trespass Anorak that will fit Kid-in-the-Middle soon if its rightful owner doesn't collect it soon and several half-pairs of gloves. Next time one of the kidlets has a friend over, I'm considering sending them home with a bag of our dirty laundry along with instructions to collect theirs when they return mine.

Today I'm wearing:

Brown linen trousers, size 18 but really starting to be too big now

Pale aqua, white, blue and brown top that I haven't been able to wear for years because it always gaped around my boobs. It's not gaping. Size 16.

Sparkly star necklace, non-matching star earrings/Brown high heeled boots/Brown cardigan