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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

So is the last question not a common thing? Because I do it every year or so, but my wife thinks I am crazy.

I do the buying all the same thing for the new, but I don't throw out the old. They go into reserve for when nothing else is clean. I keep them in a separate drawer.

I don't do it on the same basis, but I do have decay batches like that.

I'll buy a bunch of undergarments that are frequently used so that there's a whole generation. When I feel a need based on function I buy a new generation. If the old generation still has some service life it becomes 'houseware' (the 'holy' stuff worn only about the house).

Socks usually get culled completely once they have a hole of any size (evicted from the generation), while new generations tend to happen when parts wear too thin for comfort in shoes.

I usually keep holey socks as rags for use in the house or garage.

I think that is very wasteful.

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/about_freshwater/freshw...

I mean, I run 6 days a week so my running socks get beat up pretty bad. When they are dead, I need to throw them out. So my options are:

1) Buy 1 new pack of socks, throw out 6 old socks - repeat every month. Doing it this way I have to match socks between several different styles.

2) Put 4 packs of socks, throw out all of my socks, repeat 4x less often. Also I have no matching to do, as all of my socks are the same - just grab 2.

(And technically I have 2 styles of socks, summer socks and winter socks. Summer socks is a buttload of cotton socks that get bought in bulk. Winter socks are 3-4 pairs of identical wool socks that last much longer).

My son just picks two in the dark and wears them. He wanted an outward sign of his nerd cred. If they matched, he used to pick again. But he stopped doing that, because if he really didn't care, he would wear matching socks too. Has he reached some higher level of Nerdvana?

I think technically caring about having socks that doesn't match rules him out. He's testing strongly for hipster though.

Hey, definitely a nerd. For fun he finds code races in Redis/Bayeux server failover. Also he fights in clubs, bashing his friends with sticks. And designs card/board games.

I'm going to second the "definitely a nerd", since not only did he make up an arbitrary rule, he even altered his behavior to be logically consistent ("well, matches can happen in random choice, so I can't disallow those ..."). That's pretty cool.

I do that just because I'm too lazy to match my socks, or I only have a few clean socks left and none of them match. I can't honestly say I've ever thought about it from a 'what would someone else think?' perspective before reading your comment. Heh, maybe people think I'm colorblind and are just too polite to ask, or nobody notices.

I can't say I notice other peoples socks either now that I think about it.

White vs Black pretty easy to notice :)

Ok, maybe I assumed you don't use them as heavily and also have more socks.

>I have to match socks between several different styles Do I understand correctly that you throw all your socks into a drawer/container, and when you need a pair, you go and have to find two matching ones?

This may be cultural (or even familial) thing, but I always curl two socks up into a ball so that they stay together. When I need a pair, I just take one ball, uncurl it, and voila.

But do you curl matching socks or not?

If you have many different styles, you need to go hunt around and find matches. Curl or not just delays the matching problem, it does not solve it.

Having all the socks be the same makes matching an O(1) problem.

but if you curl them after drying, you have a much smaller pool to find the pair from, the just washed socks (which will be the socks you use the most anyway). So it's faster that way, than to mix them all up and only then match.

My wife has about twenty pairs of socks, and no more than a few of the pairs are the same variety. It's like some masochistic combinatorics problem every single time I fold socks. My kid and I literally were playing "sock go fish" a few times to get him to help (except ... I was more interested in the pairing, rather than taking turns. Doh.)

Laundry-folding happiness is increased significantly when I don't have to play "Find-the-mate" every time I pick up a sock (which applies to my kids' socks as well, since they are all patterned, but thankfully my son likes wearing party-colored socks, so I only need to match on shape).

I have two "vintages" of socks -- the old ones that I hate, and the newer ones that I prefer, roughly equally divided. I would donate + re-buy if I had more than two flavors of socks.

Sock go-fish is _genius_

I pretend I am a computer doing a matching problem. I have a buffer of unmatched socks that I compare each sock as I pull it out of the pile, and if unmatched I add to the buffer. Kinda fun.

Yes, I pair them after washing, and curl them after drying. Putting them together makes searching O(n) instead of O(n^2) if you have a particular style in mind.

Of course, homogeneity makes this even faster, but you lose the benefit of choice, variability and fashionableness. Quid pro quo.

I think his point was that if you're seeking out all the pairs when you curl them together, you're still spending unnecessary time and effort matching socks, just ahead of time instead of in the moment when you need socks

Exactly he does an O(N^2) Pair followed by a later O(N) search.

Why not do a O(1) Pair folloed by an O(1) Search.

Of course, there's an enlightening stackoverflow question on this: http://stackoverflow.com/q/14415881/220347

Finally, my graduate-level algorithms class comes in handy in real life.

Intuitively I'd say a human pairing socks is far better than O(n2) because finding something that matches a given sock is close to O(1) on small sets.

I'd suggest Darn Tough wool socks. Buy two of them per season if you want. They are guaranteed for life. No, they really are. Return them, and they send you new ones. My wife has returned them twice. I'm still on my first pair and I run and go backpacking. They are awesome. Plus, wool is one of the best materials for not stinking (anti-bacterial) so you don't even have to wash them (every time) if you leave them out to dry.

Lots of socks are polyester.

"Throwing out" doesn't mean "destroy". There are plenty of people who could use socks in decent condition, so it's not a waste.

Steve Jobs did it, only with his entire wardrobe.

I do this and thought I'd had an original idea.

Only having one type of sock pair * $n_pairs in rotation makes laundry super simple.

For those of you who are tired of matching socks after laundry but don't want to wear the same black socks all the time, I solved this issue by buying very colourful socks. Each pair is very different to the other pairs, so when it's time to pair them up, it's instantly obvious which socks belong to a pair.

I don't do it that often, but that is my preferred way of doing it. Eliminates the problem of having 7 socks with no matches. Eliminates the need to pair them when doing laundry or when getting dressed. And generally all my socks wear out within a couple of months of each other anyway.

Well I have to have at least as many colours of socks as I have colours of pants to match them with. That is blue, beige/khaki, and black.

Also a few bright flashy coloured ones, for fun.

I've definitely had friends who both did it, and then told me I should. So it's a thing, but I don't know how common. Guess we'll find out =D

Been wearing all black every day for a few years now. Knowing I don't have to fiddle with the world of clothing at all ever is comforting.

It's not as common as it should be.

It totally needs to be.

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