How to Fold Your Socks in Five Different Ways
How to Fold Your Socks in Five Different Ways
How many times have you gone to reach for your clean socks and found them in a hopelessly tangled ball? Socks can be notoriously difficult to fold, but we’ve put together a few techniques that will help you make sure you always find your socks organized and ready to wear! Check out these five great ways to fold your socks!
Traditional Fold
This is a very basic method of folding your socks, which works best if you like to match up each pair. Start by laying out your socks toe-to-toe and then fold them so that each sock lays flat with its right side on top of its left side. You’ll end up with two small stacks of equal height (for long socks) or one stack that’s twice as tall as the other (for short socks). It takes a little bit more time than other methods, but it’s extremely precise.
The Triangle
The best way to fold your socks, whether they’re crew-length or ankle-highs, is by making a triangle shape. Simply roll up your socks and make three diagonal folds along one of its sides until you’ve created a triangular shape. Then place that triangle in your sock drawer and repeat with another pair of socks. This strategy keeps pairs from getting mixed up, too. When you want to wear a sock but don’t know which one it is, simply hold it up against each pair until you find its match—no more rummaging around!
The Diamond
A lot of people who've mastered their sock-folding technique say it makes a diamond shape. The Philosockphy method, if you will. It's a very easy way to fold your socks and use up less space when packing for trips. Here's how it works: Take two socks (they don't need to match) and lay them so that one is on top of another. Now take each side of one sock and pull it over toward its neighbor—so that one sock is now on top of two socks, forming a diamond shape. Take these ends (the point where each side meets) and fold them together, then wrap them around from behind and tuck them underneath everything else.
Roll it Up
While we’re on a sock kick, here’s one of our favorite sock-folding methods. No folding board required! Start by simply rolling your socks from toe to heel. Then start folding each side over, using slow, deliberate motions—the more patient you are, and consistent with your movements, the more precise and crisp your final result will be. Think of it as an extreme form of origami.
The Origami Fold
To start, you need a sock. Start with a regular-sized one, and make sure it’s all white or light colored, otherwise it’ll be hard to see what you’re doing. If it has a cuff, remove that. The first fold is also called an origami fold (or slash folding), so if you’ve done origami before that might be helpful as well. Take one side of your sock and bring it over until its slash folds meet on top of each other; then unfold them again and do that with both sides of your sock.