I believe there's a sci-fi/fantasy novel by Alan Dean Foster in which he writes about a trap in a standard dungeon on a mountain which is a path that just very slowly gets steeper and steeper. At first, you don't think you need anything to deal with it, so you're not in mountaineering gear, but at some point you've been gradually lulled into walking down a path you can no longer return up.
I don't think it would work in real life but it was a neat idea. In particular, I don't think it works if you can easily see out ahead of you. But in real life, there's plenty of cases like this where you either can't see out ahead of you, or it's too cognitively expensive, or it simply never crosses your mind to think. I think a lot of the subtle controls exerted in society are like this... you are gradually corralled into doing things you never would have agreed to do if asked baldly, or if you could see that's where you were going to end up, but one step at a time you slowly walked somewhere you never would have voluntarily gone until it would be very expensive to get back out, and it's easier just to take the next step down. While I sometimes wonder if this is deliberately done, it is also certainly a situation that can arise naturally in many cases. Investing has a lot of cases like this... it's really easy to be unwilling to accept a loss or something and take the next step down the road of losing more, when you should pay the price, bail out, and accept the initial loss.
In real life this tends to happen in reverse (climbing a mountain rather than descending), since it's generally easier to go up than go down.
Reading accident reports, a common theme is people setting on what they think is a class 3 or 4 hike, getting lost and ending up on a class 5 technical climb. With a gradual transition from class 4 scrambling to class 5 slab (less than vertical) climbing you can very quickly get to a place where it would be dangerous to descend.
There's a few comments - seemingly from our American friends - that seem to suggest that left / right socks are a thing. I'm hoping I'm parsing those comments poorly, but ever since the revelation that Americans don't have kettles, I'm prepared for the worst.
I got fed up with poor socks a few years ago and embarked on a project to try to find the best, or at least consistently decent, work socks. That's work in the sense of stomping around in the workshop or outdoors, in heavy duty boots, spending most of my day standing up or moving around -- not work as in sitting at a chair for 8h while wearing mildly uncomfortable but aesthetically appropriate footwear, occasionally shuffling around a carpeted floor, etc.
Anyway, that was basically a despairing effort. Unsurprisingly, everyone claiming to have the best socks did not, in fact, have the best socks.
I did end up with a stack of hard-yakka bamboo socks, which were surprisingly comfortable when worn with big heavy blundstone boots, but about a year after discovering (and building up quite a large collection) I moved to hard-yakka boots, and then found out that the combination of their bamboo socks with their boots would result in a very uncomfortable bunching of sock around the ankle.
Bonds - very popular purveyors of socks and daks and other necessities here in Straya - have some work socks that I've since settled on, though a top-up purchase made a few months ago suggest they've changed their recipe from ~18 months back, feels like a higher ratio of nylon to cotton, but alas no record was maintained of the first tranche, so I am wary, but so far satisfied.
(For actual day-job work socks, Bonds here also do a range of basic-black that come in 3-pair sets, which have tiny lines of primary colours along the toes, red, green, blue, etc - originally I thought that was quite twee as it would help maintain pairs, but in practice it just feels like a way to shift more product - as there's no reason, beyond obsession, to match 'miscoloured stripe' pairs, but when one of a pair inevitably expires, you're then left with the difficult decision of committing fully to going pairless in the sock drawer, or throwing away a perfectly fine sock out of sympathy.)
Is it really so surprising that we don't (as a rule) have electric kettles? I think the reasons are pretty clear.
First, Americans are mostly coffee drinkers, not tea drinkers. The coffeedrinkers are mostly using coffee machines that heat the water for you, so you don't need a kettle to do it. This is true from the low-end $30 drip machine to multi-thousand-dollar espresso machines.
Second, America is on 110, not 220. Kettles in the UK do boil CRAZY FAST, but the electric kettles I've used in the US aren't really any faster than using a stovetop kettle. American tea-drinkers often have those.
Kind of: 240V is fed into homes (along with a neutral), and gets split in half.
Most receptacles are 120V for most appliances, because it gets the job done. There aren't many appliances that need more than that. The two main ones that do have 220V plugs are clothes dryers and kitchen ranges (hobs/ovens).
If you want a kettle that boils faster change your NEMA 5 socket (and breaker) that does 120V (at 15A or 20A) for a NEMA 6, and get an UK/EU kettle and change the plug.
For what it’s worth, I make drip coffee with a 120V kettle, and it boils plenty fast for my needs. A several hundred to thousand dollar electrical project seems overkill to save what I assume would be a few seconds to a minute per cup of coffee.
My regarded-as-moderately-high-end US electric kettle isn't really any faster to boil water than my stovetop is—but, it can hold a temperature, and has several settable stop-and-hold-points at sub-boiling temps, which is great for various teas and coffees.
What's not relatable to me is European (I assume?) reports of boiling water in an electric kettle, then transferring to the stovetop. My kettle's not meaningfully faster than the stovetop, and is a lot slower for quantities past a liter or so—it's only worth having for the other features. I assume that's the voltage difference making itself known.
> How would this boil water faster if it’s still the same wattage?
It wouldn't be the same wattage: it would be double the wattage.
The wiring can handle 15 or 20A, and at 120V that's a practical limit of 1800W. You keep the amperage limit (no cabling replacement needed), but 240V would allow 3600W.
I’m Australian, it is mildly surprising. America is the land of convenience, and I’ve found an electric kettle even at 120v is still faster than boiling water on an electric stove, and much faster than boiling on a gas stove.
They're a waste of space if you don't make tea much, or one of the fancier and more-manual coffee-making methods.
Most people in the US don't make tea much, and just use an automatic drip machine or a keurig for coffee, so of course they don't have a kettle.
We have one, but it's because we drink more tea than most Americans, and since we have it for that, it's space-saving for me to also use it for pourover coffee (rather than having a drip machine).
Ted Lasso's reaction to hot tea is probably about the median US attitude toward it. We're just not used to it, and those of us who dive into that world usually have to kinda acquire the taste through some effort, before we start enjoying it. Very few of us take our first sip of typical black or green tea and go "oh yes, that's delicious, I'd love to drink that every day". Black coffee's not far off, but it's more culturally present so there's more pressure and opportunity to acquire that taste.
For my part, despite working at it for years, I still don't really like cheap tea (the stuff I could actually afford to drink every day, and that can be found without seeking out rare-in-the-US tea shops or ordering online), though higher-end tea is really good.
We drink a ton of iced tea, but that's easily made on the stovetop in a large pot, and can be bought in gallon-quantities at the grocery store. Having a kettle doesn't improve iced-tea-making very much.
[EDIT] Part of it may be that we drink on-the-go more than other countries. Just a guess, but might be true. Iced tea and coffee (hot or cold) are both much better for that than hot tea—one doesn't usually make a thermos-full of hot tea and drink it straight from the thermos, I'd expect (but maybe I'm wrong?) but that's normal for coffee.
I forgot about iced tea, but I'm under the impression that how popular it is depends on the region of the US you're talking about. I don't see a lot of people drinking iced tea in my area, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone make it for themselves.
> I forgot about iced tea, but I'm under the impression that how popular it is depends on the region of the US you're talking about. I don't see a lot of people drinking iced tea in my area, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone make it for themselves.
Sweet tea is quite regional (the South).
Iced tea's popular in much of the country, but I think making it at home has dropped off just like making many other things at home has (how many people make their own stock or broth anymore?). These days, a gallon of store-brand iced tea is just about the cheapest drink most grocery stores stock—barely more expensive than making it at home, really, so why bother?
[EDIT] For foreigners wondering WTF the difference is between proper sweet tea and normal iced tea with sugar added: you add the sugar during or before steeping, while the water's nice and hot, and, usually, you add a lot of it. The difference in the finished product is kinda like the difference between making a mixed drink with simple syrup, versus using granulated sugar. You can cleanly dissolve a lot more sugar in hot water than cold (see again: simple syrup), and it tends to stay well-dissolved even when it cools. It's commonly believed that it also affects the flavor, not just texture and level-of-sweetness, but that may just be in our heads (I think it does, too, but can't explain why—it's not like we caramelize the sugar or anything like that)
Stupid question, is iced tea always with added sugar? That kind of would change the drink from moderately healthy (plain tea) to every doctor's nightmare.
No. You specifically order "sweet" or "unsweet" tea in the South (or "half and half" if you want sweet but not cloying). Anywhere else, I would expect that sweet tea would be unavailable.
Note: this does not apply to bottled/canned teas, which are usually close to "half and half" in sweetness.
Most restaurants here serve soft drinks from a fountain rather than individual cans/bottles, so refills are free. If a restaurant uses individual containers for service, you will have to pay for refills. However, iced tea has free refills everywhere I've ever seen.
If you're in the South, Ordering "iced tea" with no qualifiers will probably get you sweet tea. Everywhere else, it'll probably be unsweetened. We do have a variety of less-sweet tea drinks, but those will be typically referred to by a brand name.
No. Sweet tea (obviously) always has added sugar, but iced tea may be sweetened or unsweetened. Restaurants that serve it may offer sweetened or unsweetened, or may offer only unsweetened (sometimes styled "unsweet"), with sugar packets to sweeten it yourself if you so choose. It's rarely (but not never—typically only when bottled, though, this is basically never an option at a restaurant that offers cups of the stuff) offered with artificial sweetener included, but some people add their own to unsweetened iced tea. Restaurants and drive-throughs often have both sugar and one or more artificial sweeteners available, in packets.
Old-school restaurants, and especially diners, may have a mid-sized glass jar[0] of sugar with a metal lid and little metal flap on it (that flips up if you tip it, allowing some sugar out) left on the table, mainly used to sweeten coffee and iced tea. This is getting less common, in favor of little trays of sweetener packets, but you still see it sometimes. Used to be very common, 1990s and earlier.
True sweet tea (huge in the South, i.e. the part of the country that seceded during the Civil War, but much less ubiquitous outside it) is incredibly unhealthy. It contains more dissolved sugar than is easily achievable in room-temp-or-lower water/tea, by adding it during the boil, same as how you can super-concentrate sugar in water when making simple syrup (though it doesn't go that far) and it retains that sugar even when it's refrigerated. Sweetened iced tea has a much broader range of sugar levels, and may be relatively healthy, with only a little sugar, or very sugary.
Outside of the South, you'll often get sweetened iced tea if you ask for "sweet tea". It's fairly uncommon to see the real thing in Northern or Western restaurants. This sometimes leads to confusion, with non-Southerners going to the South and ordering sweet tea and getting something offensively sweet compared to what they're used to, or Southerners ordering it elsewhere and being disappointed with what they're served.
Everyone in my (American) family drinks at least a cup, and often 3-5 cups of tea per day. This is considered a lot here. Tea drinking is so non-normalized that despite my entire family's love for tea, I was well into adulthood before I learned of electric kettles (from Tumblr) and introduced them to my family.
They're easier to find these days but still rare. If you ask for a hot tea at a restaurant, you'll often get a suspicious-looking teabag that has spent at least 6 months in the cupboard (iced is more available). I'm sure you can guess at the quality of most of the teas in an American grocery store; I usually wind up ordering from specialty tea shops instead.
You know, now that I think about it... it's probably not be true anymore, but I bet 3-4 decades ago having a dedicated "sun tea" pitcher rivaled or exceeded kettle ownership, in the US.
("sun tea" is made by sticking a big glass pitcher or jar outside on a warm sunny day, with water and teabags and maybe some citrus slices in it, and waiting for it to become something resembling tea, which you may drink at its natural somewhat-warm temperature, drink over ice, or refrigerate).
Ooh sun tea is so good - it doesnt just resemble it, it can make for a tasty drink. Extraction is a function of temperature and time after all, and lower temperature extractions dissolve less of the more bitter chemicals in plants.
Odd, because my experience in the US is that about 10% of men I know drink tea, and about 90% of the women I know drink tea. It's strangely gender-based. Kind of like yogurt.
I bet there are large regional differences, too. I know that tea-drinking in the southern US, for instance, is much more common than in the northern.
Curiosity got the better of me and I had to look this up. The US is the 35th most tea-drinking nation! And overall, there are slightly more male tea-drinkers than female. At least according to this site:
Also, looking at the age breakdown of US tea drinker perhaps explains the difference in our experiences. 18.5% of people in my age group (50+) drink tea. 46.2% of those in the 25-49 year age group drink tea.
I bet those stats are tea tea, not counting herbal tea. And the vast majority of consumed tea leaves by weight, in the US, almost certainly go to iced tea, not hot tea as is common in other countries. (I guarantee "tea-drinking in the southern US" is more than 95% consumed-cold "sweet tea" or iced tea; even if you make that yourself—and it's very, very cheap to buy pre-made—it's about as easy to do it in a pot on the stove as to use a kettle)
> I bet those stats are tea tea, not counting herbal tea.
I think you're right. There is a table showing the popularity breakdown of the different types of tea, including herbal, but I think that's the global breakdown, not US.
It didn't provide a stat for it, but the page does remark that the majority of black tea consumed in the US goes to making iced tea.
Anecdotally, I'd noticed that tea vs. coffee seems to be generational. My wife and I drink tea at home while our parents prefer coffee (what coffee we have in the house is pretty much just for guests and some recipes that require it). Likewise, our siblings and their SOs seem to favor tea. My grandparents also tended to favor tea.
It sort of feels like a generational flip-flop thing to me between tea and coffee.
You'll see the inverse with (black or nearly-black) coffee, I bet.
Men drink (black or lightly sweetened/dairied) coffee or "energy drinks", women drink espresso-based mostly-milk drinks that don't taste like coffee, or tea (often green or herbal, and also often mixed with a bunch of milk or sugar, unless herbal). Not that there isn't plenty of overlap, but that's how the landscape looks to me, to call out the two big bubbles on this particular Venn diagram.
What's funny is the people who were mad about it were tea importers, not tea drinkers. British policy on tea in the US [EDIT, er, the American colonies, that is] lowered prices, a lot, which ruined the profit margins of importers/smugglers.
We drink tons and tons of iced tea, but that's about as easy to make in a large pot on the stove as it is to make with a kettle, and most folks already have a large pot. Plus you can buy large containers of it already made at the grocery store.
The difference is that Americans don't drink very many boiled-water drinks and so don't really need them. And the ones they do are easily handled and better handled by the specialized <100$ gadget that is a coffee machine.
Very much not the case for me, with a (fairly good) US electric kettle and a natural gas range. They're comparable, speed-wise, for smaller quantities, and if I need to boil more than a liter or so, the stovetop is a lot faster.
Elsewhere in the thread voltage difference are brought up—that's probably what does it, typical US wall service is far lower-voltage than in Europe. That, and I've definitely had electric ranges in the US that were incredibly slow to boil water, so that might be a factor. Gas, though? At least as fast, depending on the quantity. (I hear induction electric is even faster, but have only used those a very little bit at a couple AirBnBs, so don't really know, first-hand)
For me, in Europe, my electric kettle boils water maybe somewhere around 3-5 times faster than my gas stovetop. I usually use it to pre-boil the water when cooking as that saves so much time.
Especially if you have an induction stove, where the stove itself is hot instantly so you can pretty much just pour the water from the kettle into the pot and start cooking (unlike a resistive stove, where the water often cools quite a bit before the stove catches up so you end up waiting a couple of minutes after boiling the water in the kettle for it to be boiling on the stove again - still faster than going from room temp on the stove though).
Electric kettles are starting to catch on in the US, I think. I just got my mom one to use with an aeropress, and now she uses it to boil water for things like spaghetti (adding the kettle water to the stove pot)
I do the same, a small amount of water starts heating on the gas stove but I completely fill the kettle. Way faster, and in areas with hydro, better for the environment.
There is no way an electric stove is quicker than a gas stove. I did a quick google search and a standard gas stove on high is 12,000-18,000 BTU, which is 3.5-5.4kw.
It's quite fast if you've got 240v outlets in your kitchen. Otherwise it's a little slower, altho I do like being able to hit a button and wander away to do something else, which I never feel comfortable doing when something's on the flame.
Personally, I rarely boil water outside of cooking something, where my stove does the job perfectly well. I don't want or need to sacrifice counter space for a kettle.
Over the past decade, decade-and-a-half, it seems to have become quite common in at least the Netherlands to install taps that provide cold, hot and boiling water in new kitchens. These days, the higher end taps also do chilled and carbonated water.
The origin story for the boiling water tap is powdered instant soup, which isn't quite instant without instant boiling water... :)
I tried toe-socks over a decade ago when I had a persistent toe fungi I couldn't shake with treatments, etc. The toe-socks were a win. I have worn toe-socks since.
Sadly, they very much are left/right specific (unless you topologist consider that you can turn one of them inside out to flip its handedness, but then the stitching seams are now on the outside!).
They are a little on the thin side and though I bought like 10 pair, they slowly but steadily wear through and need to be tossed. I wish I could say the lefts wear as often as the rights but I appear to walk in an asymmetric way. (Or, you know, Coriolis Effect.)
Further, finding replacements that match has been difficult (I would like them all to match so that left/right is the only factor in pairing them). Though I have bought the same brand, trying to get the matching length has been surprisingly hard. I'm not sure why.
When I find them again though, I'll order at least 20 pair this time.
You want to check out backpacking gear review sites like Outdoor Gear Lab, Section Hiker, or for the most authoritative data, Backpacking Light ($).
In the mean time, try searching for Darn Tough, Silverlight Socks or Smartwool for boot socks.
The longstanding English manufacturer Bridgedale must have been taken over by MBAs recently because it is being marketed heavily. Their socks may be fine; I don't know.
Then there is Injinji, and other two-layer (inner and outer) and toe-separated sock systems more generally. I like Injinji's sport sock (once I got over the look of my feet in socks with five separate toes). Injinji has a range of socks made from different textiles.
All of these use wool/synthetic blends, with the synthetic usually some form of nylon. Silverlight's nylon is coated with silver for antimicrobial properties (reduced stink). I have just placed an order for a five-pack. (I also spend up to 10.5 hours a day on my feet in boots.)
For non-wool, thinner socks I use Drymax, which are aimed at the running/athletics crowd. I've found them very durable (used them quite a bit for tramping (NZ-ish for bushwalking/hiking) and very easy-care. They are not left-right differentiated though.
I'm American and I'm also not understanding the comments about pairing identical socks that were purchased at the same time. I just tend to buy them 10 pairs or so at a time, match them randomly, and wear them until individual socks get lost or worn out.
This is what I do as well. All of my everyday socks are identical, so I don't have to pair them up at all after laundry day. I just keep them loose in a drawer and pull two arbitrary ones out when I put my socks on.
more americans have kettles now because they're cheap and easy to buy on amazon. and home-made real coffee is more popular. also there are more 2nd gen americans these days with parents from asia. i think the venn diagram of rice cooker owners and kettle owners is pretty large.
i think it's the brick and mortar retailers that never caught onto the idea.
As a weird American I have a 1970's electric water boiler I still use that is incredibly fast at boiling water. Passed down to me from my grandparents because I enjoy tea and hate coffee. I really hope it never dies because it works way better than the plastic modern one I had in college.
But on the topic of socks: Hitting my 30's pushed me to finally invest in nice longer lasting socks. Spending $120 over the last few years on bundles of various wool socks until I found ones I like was completely worth it. Although learning to properly care for wool socks was a process. They probably aren't for everyone, but for people that like thick longer songs I love my People Socks. [https://www.peoplesocks.com/]
> There's a few comments - seemingly from our American friends - that seem to suggest that left / right socks are a thing. I'm hoping I'm parsing those comments poorly, but ever since the revelation that Americans don't have kettles, I'm prepared for the worst.
There can be. Typically fancy athletic socks with more fitted toe areas than normal.
I’ll leave the kettles alone because that ground has been well trod (hopefully, using the best socks).
However I am concerned that you did all this sock research and somehow did not end up with toe-socks, which of course have left and right socks (unless you are the kind of maniac who would wear a sock inside out, which I gather from your studies that you are not).
I have left and right socks in Austria. If I accidentally end up with two left ones or two right ones (I can only tell by the L and R emblems) and notice it after having left the house it completely ruins my day. As in, I will generally get up and leave wherever I am, go home and wait for the feeling to reset by going to sleep in the evening.
Huh, sounds like people are yanking your chain? I have literally never heard of left and right socks and kettles - both electric and flat bottomed urns of metal - are commonplace.
That’s mainly because many Americans have a coffee maker instead of brewing tea. But electric kettles are increasingly common. I have one, as well as one that I can put on the stove.
Kettles are not just for brewing tea. Whenever I need to boil large (quart or above) amounts of water (e.g. for pasta) I boil maybe 80 % in the electric kettle and the rest in the pot. Goes much faster.
At least in the US, I think that's only true for electrical resistance cooktops/hobs. For both natural-gas and inductive cooktops and 110V kettles, I find that the water boils much faster in the pot.
I accidentally solved this problem by entirely side-stepping socks, because I could, because I switched from management to programming, and I don't live in a cold country.
For about a decade now, I've worn open sandals pretty much everywhere and for almost every occasion. The few times I've had to wear socks (because, dress shoes), I've found some pairs handy in my closet.
I was like you, at one point (2021 or 2022) I reckon wore socks and actual shoes maybe less than 30 days out of a year. If I go anywhere it'd be in a croc or sandals.
But then discovered the fun of electric skateboarding.
This necessitated wearing skate shoes and socks.. which I bought in bulk, no complaints there.
I suppose sock management is more tractable under purpose-specific conditions. Maybe it takes on the characteristics of gear (utility-dominant), rather than attire (aesthetics-dominant). If utilities are mismatched, well who cares?
Similarly, I've worn boat shoes or vans without socks since I was a freshman in high school and it's great! The only exceptions are dress shoes and when biking.
This might be the play. I avoid wearing socks and closed-toe shoes as much as I can, but I've found many people in the West are disgusted by the sight of feet.
Exactly. A few months ago I threw out all non-specialty socks (I kept some boot/dress socks) and bought a few dozen pairs of the same sock. Keep them all in the same bin, don't have to fold or match socks ever again. One of the highest-alpha changes I've made.
I pay 50 cents per sock. At the rate they get lost this is more economical in my experience. At three dollars a sock you need to get 6x the uses to break even and even those are considered cheap socks by some.
Each and every pair of socks is mated for life and wear-leveling is only a problem to the extent that I favor my dominant foot.
The clips have a high retention rate such that no more than one clip comes loose each wash cycle, which means it is obvious which socks made the failed escape attempt.
This hasn't been a real problem for me. I'm not sure why. Some of it may be that I buy black socks, not white, and some of it may be that I mix freshly laundered socks into the clean sock collection, so every sock gets used about the same amount overall.
So, what's the solution to pairing socks? Buying many pairs from the same. Sure. That makes sense. But what happens when half of them are lost or damaged and you can't buy the same kind?
Do you end up as someone pairing socks again or do you throw away half of your socks?
You can always demote the other half of socks to cleaning supplies. They are really useful to stick your hand into and start going to all those hard to reach places all around the house, gathering dust. When done, just turn them inside out to trap the dust inside and THEN throw them away.
If you rotate your socks appropriately the other half is probably about to be damaged anyway, so just throw them out. The savings on using each sock until the very end are marginal.
Even nice socks are pretty cheap. Time spent thinking about socks is almost certainly negatively valued due to when factoring in opportunity costs. So yeah, toss the orphan socks.
In my 20s I used to think it was awesome to have all the same cheap white tube socks, just a drawer full of them that I didn't have to pair. Then somehow I got interested in merino wool socks and liked them. So eventually (expensive!) I built up a collection of them and most are different which means they all get paired after drying. Now I don't mind pairing them.
Maybe as one gets older they are less likely to mind pairing socks? Maybe as they get wealthier (as employment became much less immediately necessary to my comfort, something "snapped" and now I enjoy working (working hard) on things around the house). Maybe just having more expensive socks means one doesn't mind spending time with them.
I tend to get white socks or black socks. Over time, yes, different brands are not an exact match but in general, it's close enough for me and I just don't worry about it.
In 2003 I bought a gross of socks from bulk-bargain-sock-sales.com which sadly is no longer with us. A paypal checkout and $60 got me a gross of dress socks and a gross of athletic. Took me till 2013 to run out of the athletics, I'm 1/8th of the way through the dress. I did one more re-up on the athletics (my daily driver). and am now buying off amazon in large packs. I basically have hiking socks (all rei), dress socks (all the same), athletics (all the same), and specialty socks like hand knit and or snowboarding. It's great. I just chuck out socks and pull new ones from the bag.
I played ball in college. They'd give us a new set of socks before every game. It was such a nice small luxury. I have that again. A gross of socks doesn't take up that much space (1' cube) in storage. If you have the space I recommend it and just chuck or goodwill all of your non-compliant socks.
This should not be a hard problem. All my socks are identical and they have their own drawer. When a sock gets a hole in it I throw it away. When the drawer starts looking sparse I pull out my phone and add another 12-pack to my next grocery order.
I usually don't have enough socks. I did just buy 3 more pair from Darn Tough though.
It's funny, long time ago, back in my bachelor days I definitely didn't have enough socks, and wouldn't take time after work to go get some. So I would go sockless on the way to work in the morning, buy some from Target to wear for the day. Then do that each day until the weekend when I would wash my clothes. Then that eventually got me enough socks to get through the week.
I buy Falke socks en masse whenever on sale and have ample stock of unused socks available (at the moment about a dozen pairs) for use whenever I have to retire a pair because it is worn out or lost its mate. Small things, but like shoes or mattresses, comfortable socks make a huge difference to your quality of life given how much of your life you spend in them.
I buy them at Marshalls and TJ Max and if you notice, a lot of the socks are mixed pairs. 6 pairs but each pair has a different logo on it. There are only a few that are all the same in a single pack.
To anyone looking for a pragmatic solution to a sock shortage, I can't recommend this1 24-pack enough. Unlike most socks that pretend to be 100% cotton, these actually are, which means they aren't as durable as plastic alternatives, and feature a seam that can get in the way, but they provide unparalleled comfort. Especially if you don't mind going through multiple pairs on busy days.
My wife and I used to spend a lots of time pairing socks for the family after laundry. We hated it. When my son started picking up clothes and socks for himself to ware everyday, he picked any two socks, no bother to pair at all. We tried several times teaching him to find matching socks but we failed.
Now everyone in the family wares unmatched socks… the little one changed our family :D I am wondering whether the kids will start pairing socks when he and his older sister grow up to teenagers and start paying attention to their appearances.
I have the opposite problem: I feel I'm running out of socks and buy them too often. If only this carried over to other aspects of maintenance I'd be in business.
This Karim Rashid quote stood out to me when I was a teenager:
> Own 30 pairs of same color socks and 30 pairs of the same colored underwear so that socks always match, and do your laundry every month.
Not that I follow it to a T, but I think there's something about standardizing everyday items to reduce the mental load. Similar to tupperware: only own two container sizes so everything nests nicely and you're never left searching for the odd lid.
I realized at the young age of 35 that most socks are much more comfortable to wear inside-out, to avoid the seam from chafing against your toes. So I've been doing that ever since.
Now, in latter years I've found some socks that are properly designed, with the seam not at the toe tips but rather on the top of the socks.
Buy high-quality merino/nylon socks (Smartwool, Darn Tough, etc) and you will not have this problem. I have pairs that have lasted 10 years and are still going strong. Yes, they're expensive compared to the usual cotton stuff. It's because they're better.
I don't usually wear much clothing because I rarely go out. Like maybe once or twice a month maximum do I need to leave the apartment complex. When it gets chilly (which half the time is the AC) sometimes I put socks on though.
Its probably been about a week since I washed my socks. I have mainly been putting on the same (usually dirty) pair for the last three months. Often dirty for three weeks or more. But only for a little while usually because then my feet get too warm. So they don't get particularly dirty.
My foot was itching quite a lot yesterday though, so this may not be ideal.
I’m not sure, I think people might be over complicating socks. I have an O(n) pairing process that is about the same complexity as if I had the same socks all the time. If I encounter a sock I haven’t paired, it’s laid flat somewhere clean. Then when I pick up a sock I can do a visual o(1) lookup to find a pair, otherwise it’s laid flat where the others are. Eventually the unpaired socks are first examined if I didn’t miss any, and then are tossed if they’re just lost a pair.
I do my laundry about once a week, so I’m at most ever looking at 7 socks to pair. If it takes longer I’m still looking at less than 10 socks to pair in the cache.
I use the same, but for me it's definitely n^2, because the visual lookup is not constant. Some of the problem might be that I am old, stupid, and slow, but also because I (stupidly) have a lot of socks that look quite similar, but are not the same. Sometimes I even have to lift them up and feel them to notice that they are different!
If you have texturally distinct socks, pairing in bright light can help with this. You can also have a “sense-memory” because you touched that socks when you cached it, so if you have visually similar but textually different socks, you can still perform a quick lookup with touch-memory.
In order to avoid the effort of pairing socks, I once had the genius idea of buying them all the same colors. Then all hell broke loose as the color may be the same, but they were from different pairs still and so became more difficult to pair: you will lose an individual sock but not a pair.
I stopped losing socks as I began buying them in bright colors so pairs where trivial to spot in all the sock journey during laundry.
I avoid the effort of pairing socks by just not doing it. Sometimes people notice and ask whether I bought them like that, in the end nobody cares. When a sock is worn down I can throw it away and still use the other one. Works well for me.
This worked for me for awhile. Eventually it becomes necessary to pair them by level of wear, which is tedious, but you can cull the worst from the pile, or start over with an entirely new bunch.
This is me with black socks. I currently have a bunch of mismatched black socks sitting on top of my dresser, because I swear their matches are in my house somewhere so I'm not giving them up.
I bought three or four pair of Darn Tough seven or eight years ago, and have picked up an average of another pair about every year since.
I've yet to discard any of them, though one of the pairs from that first year is juuuuust about shot and probably needs to go.
My only other socks are a pack of cheap white athletic socks (only worn for... doing athletic things, not counting stuff like hiking) and a pair or two of very thin non-wool black dress socks that I almost never wear.
A warning: I'd avoid buying them on Amazon, I got one pair on there that I'm pretty sure were counterfeit (felt much cheaper, developed holes after just a couple wears, fit was way different from all my others) so I only buy straight from DT now.
I've been wearing nothing but Darn Tough for the last decade. They last awhile. After a few years a few get small holes or the elastic wears out. I save them up until I get 6 or so pair and send them back to Darn Tough. They send back a store credit for new socks. Highly recommended.
> notice I don't have socks
> write 10,000+ words on not having socks
> four years later
> still haven't bought socks
I believe there's a sci-fi/fantasy novel by Alan Dean Foster in which he writes about a trap in a standard dungeon on a mountain which is a path that just very slowly gets steeper and steeper. At first, you don't think you need anything to deal with it, so you're not in mountaineering gear, but at some point you've been gradually lulled into walking down a path you can no longer return up.
I don't think it would work in real life but it was a neat idea. In particular, I don't think it works if you can easily see out ahead of you. But in real life, there's plenty of cases like this where you either can't see out ahead of you, or it's too cognitively expensive, or it simply never crosses your mind to think. I think a lot of the subtle controls exerted in society are like this... you are gradually corralled into doing things you never would have agreed to do if asked baldly, or if you could see that's where you were going to end up, but one step at a time you slowly walked somewhere you never would have voluntarily gone until it would be very expensive to get back out, and it's easier just to take the next step down. While I sometimes wonder if this is deliberately done, it is also certainly a situation that can arise naturally in many cases. Investing has a lot of cases like this... it's really easy to be unwilling to accept a loss or something and take the next step down the road of losing more, when you should pay the price, bail out, and accept the initial loss.