I love Bombas socks and recently treated myself to a few new pairs. Then the first time I washed them, one went missing. Ugh. Sucks. Unfortunately, losing a sock is common; the sock company Feetures says that socks go missing at the rate of 15 per person per year. Yikes.

Where do all these missing socks go?

I was so pissed at losing one of my Bombas socks that I decided to dig in and find the answer to this quandary. What I found shocked me: dryers have an “overload compartment” where clothes are diverted when the dryer senses that drying efficiency has dropped. As you might guess, smaller items of clothes — socks and underwear — are what get sucked into the overload compartment. (You don’t notice missing underwear as much because they aren’t in pairs.)

It makes perfect sense! When I found this out, I was like, “Duh!”.

To recover your lost socks you merely need to open the overload compartment and remove them. How to do this varies by brand and model of dryer and, unfortunately, accessing the compartment isn’t easy for most models of dryers. Fortunately, I kept my owners manual for our dryer and it walked me through how to access the compartment. If you didn’t keep your owner’s manual, you can find it online here: Laundry Appliance Manuals Online.

My reunion with my lost single socks was bittersweet as I had thrown away the twin for many of the lost pairs, and so I was left with a single sock again! From now on I’ll be checking the overload compartment regularly!

[Note: This IFOD was published on April Fool’s Day!]