Match the socks

I am sure it’s true in your household- you do laundry and somehow you will have orphan socks! Socks with no pair! You will collect them over your never ending loads of laundry in a pile and then after a while, one of two things happen

Option 1. You just trash them thinking there is no hope of ever finding the pair.

Option 2. You employ your kids and they play a game of 'match the socks'

So recently, over a lazy weekend, I employed by 9 and 4 year old to play the game 'Match the socks'. I handed them a big bag of mis-matched socks and I came back in an hour and smiled. The socks were sprawled out on the rug and the girls were working it! They lined them up, matched them and then sorted them by owner of the said socks!

They matched over 35 pairs, yes 35 for the 4 of us! Who knew?

Mission Accomplished! We still have some orphan socks which will have to wait until the next lazy weekend!

I pause: We were doing fine just without these 35 pairs of socks. We had clean socks (on most days) and we were doing fine.

I wonder: Without even realizing, do we get trapped in having more than we need or we can consume?

We joke amongst ourselves, a trip of Costco is always a couple of hundred dollars, a sale at the store results often in more t-shirts than we had planned, a grocery trip results in overfilled bags and so on.

Recently we went through a big round of purging, we donated boxes and boxes of things, threw out a tonne of stuff and streamlined living. In retrospect it was very little!

After the game of ‘match the socks’ I requested the kids- let’s give away one stuffed animal per kid from their collection. Surprisingly, they didn’t flinch, each kid chose a stuffed animal, and they kissed the animal good bye. Away it went in the box of donation!

Yes, That easily.

So I am taking inspiration from them, Less is sometimes definitely more.
 I can make simple choices.... use what we have, share what we have and above all, match the socks right away!