More intrigued about the socks part, how did you solve it? I’ve lost enough to understand that there’s something clearly wrong about the way I deal with them.
I have, however, just settled on a uniform for work: same underwear, white or black socks, grey t-shirt under my scrubs (oh, the joys of wearing pajamas at work). Darn Tough socks aren’t cheap, but they are guaranteed for life, and they’re great for preventing smelly feet if you’re prone to them.
My cat has indeed never been interested in socks. However, he'll move almost everything else. I still remember the day I had to wear sun glasses to classes, because he hid my normal glasses, later discovered to be behind the bookcase.
Unfortunately, this only works where the feet have stopped growing, and where the choice of fashion makes this feasible. Mostly, that's adult men with standard black or otherwise dark socks. My young son loves brightly patterned and colourful socks with variation (as befits a five year old), but keeping those paired is challenging.
I have one kind of gym sock and one kind of dress sock. I never need to pair socks; each type goes into a box in my dresser or closet.
Similarly, I never fold gym shorts, gym shirts, or underwear. (Who cares?) Each gets stuffed in a general area of a drawer. The time savings substantially outweighs the inefficient use of space.
My usual t-shirts (32° from Costco — super comfortable) are generally wrinkle-free and likewise just get stuffed in a bin.
95% of the time my outfits are grab-and-go and require minimal laundry effort.
My wife pointed out to me early this year that I have a uniform which I didn’t actually notice until then - the same jeans (multiple pairs of the same style in black and blue), and only one style of t-shirt but in 3 colours (it’s a lie - I have 2 styles of t-shirt).
It might sound boring to some, but there’s no better feeling to me than to not even have to think when getting dressed - it’s a FILO Queue!
My guess is that people using a dryer are probably more prone to be victims of this.
How I do things is: - put dirty clothes in the dirty clothes bag as soon as I undress - put clothes by type in a laundry bag before washing them - hanging clean clothes to dry
The last part is probably the most important, because if you hang an odd number of socks, you know there's an issue so you'll look for the missing one. And the laundry bags will avoid you having socks stuck in pants/trousers.
That’s why I started checking. If you don’t catch it early, you’re not going to find it.
Sometimes it also just gets stuck in some clothes and it doesn’t fall out on its own too. If I’m missing a sock, I give my clothes the ol’ shake.
I have an "unpaired socks stay in the laundry-room" policy which covers most cases, but it won't help if one of them exfiltrates within another piece of clothing.