Solutions to the sock dilemma

 Socks are lost in the washing machine or dryer, resulting in "orphan" (or more accurately, "twinless") socks.  We need to come up with some solutions. 

1. Buy 30 pairs of identical socks.  Some socks will be lost, but your socks will always match.  At a certain point, buy more socks identical to the first set of 30, or begin again with a different color or pattern. This solution is expensive but irrefutable.   

2. Wear socks that do not match. Make that your personal style. "Life is too short to make your socks match." If your socks do happen to match on any given day, that is fine too. Nobody will complain, in my experience.    

3. Wear no socks. 

4.  Continue your current pattern of losing socks, but decide not to care about loss of socks. Discard twinless socks, or keep them as dishrags. Whatever...   

5. Continue your pattern of losing socks, but continue, also, your laments for the loss of socks. Realize that your complaints about the loss of socks fulfills a psychological need, scratches an itch otherwise unscratchable.   

6. Worry about other stuff.  The problem will disappear because it is not very important. 

7. Place socks in a laundry bag with zipper before doing laundry. An elegant but dull solution. This is the one I have ultimately chosen, despite being tempted at times by solutions 2 and 3.