Frugality and Underwear

Oh darn -- how do you talk about underwear without thoroughly embarrassing the owners of said underwear?

Someone gave me a tip several years ago with regard to laundry. With a bunch of boys in the house, she said that I could distinguish whose laundry was whose by utilizing the different name-brands and their unique features. For example, one boy gets gray socks, another gets white socks, and the third gets white socks with gray heels. It makes it easier to get laundry sorted and back to its owner.

It seems like I'm buying underwear all the time. Enough friends have mentioned that the gifts will be an "underwear and socks Christmas" that I think other people get stuck buying underwear "all the time" too. Today while doing laundry, I noticed something. One of the males in my household hasn't needed new underwear since my mom bought some as a gift over three years ago. (See, that's my excuse for buying underwear for Christmas gifts. My mommy taught me to do it!) That fellow's 3-yr-old underwear is still in fantastic shape. So I web-hunted. Towncraft is available at JC Penneys, and it costs three or four times as much as Hanes and Fruit of the Loom. But it lasts SO much longer that it's cheaper in the long run.

And thus ends the embarrassing frugality observation of the day.

My next job is to find out if there's enough variety in Towncraft that I could buy it and still figure out whose laundry is whose when I'm sorting and folding. OR I could start making these guys do their own laundry. But that would probably be more work than it's worth. Besides, they cook for me sometimes and clean my bathrooms and mow my lawn; surely I can wash their laundry.