A few years after child number three entered the family, I lost control of the family's socks.

When the first child was born, I lovingly matched the tiny socks and neatly arranged them in the top drawer near the changing table. Pale blue socks matched the pale blue outfit of the day. The navy blue socks were set aside for the sailor outfit. The green socks matched the yellow and green striped jumper. And so on.

When child number two entered the family, we had just moved to a new house a mere week after enduring a cesarean. Not only did I have a toddler who was the original Energizer Bunny, but I had a screaming newborn who loved to nurse every half hour. In between lactating, chasing a kid and trying to stay awake, I somehow managed to toss the toddler's socks into the top drawer.

Never mind matching them, at least they were all in one place in a drawer. I could just sift through the drawer and pull out the matching socks. Never mind that I couldn't find the gray socks to go with the cute sweatshirt ensemble, the navy blue would just have to do.

And then baby number three arrived 23 months later. There were still boxes unpacked in the basement. One of them probably had the oldest kid's baby socks in there.

We moved again.

Something happened after this third kid and third move. At first, I was able to sort out the kid's socks and place them in a bottom drawer in each of their rooms. Then I went back to work at a job that required some travel. I would arrive home just before the kids got out of school and toss a load of laundry in the washer. Pull the stuff out of the dryer and fold it up.

Some days, we were lucky enough to get the clothes back into each of the rooms.

But the socks...

Somehow, we ended up with a sock basket.

"Go get your socks!" I'd holler at the kids each morning before school. And off they'd trot dutifully to the sock basket. If a kid came up with matching socks, all was well. Sometimes they'd give up and wear ankle socks from two different brands.

But hey, they were both white and around the same size!

We've been doing the sock basket for about two years now. My mom once bravely tried to match the entire basket. It took her several hours. We so much appreciated that effort, but about three weeks later, we had the sock basket full again. The hubby and I even assigned each kid to tackle the sock matching effort each week.

"How can we possibly have an entire basket of socks with none of them matching?" my husband grumbled. We were on our way to a basketball game and he was trying to find socks for himself.

"Just dig deeper," I said.

I have fantasies of dumping the entire basket of socks into a box for the next Goodwill pick up and heading to Target to start all over...