Thursday is National Lost Sock Memorial Day, a time to say goodbye to all of the single socks you've been holding onto, hoping their partner will eventually turn up.
This is such a universal problem that Samsung commissioned a study in 2016 and found that, on average, people lose 15 socks a year. So, where do the socks all go?
Through the survey, Samsung researchers were able to develop a formula, called the sock loss index:
(L+C)-(P x A)
L = Laundry size
C = Washing complexity
P = The positivity towards doing laundry
A = Degree of attention
It turns the problem isn't so much mathematical as it is psychological. Sock loss may have more to do with laziness than anything else. Think about it. We fling our socks off, and kick them under furniture. And you could be turning your house upside down to look for those missing socks, rather than looking in just the obvious places. Instead, we all just hang onto our single socks, hoping their partner will return as mysteriously as they left.
But today is the day to say goodbye. Set the socks free.
Or, if you must hang onto them, consider upcycling them into sock puppets for your kids!