I have a similar approach to e-mail, not in regard to losing them, but in the perfect being the enemy of the good: if I waited until I felt able to put together a decent reply then I'd rarely write anything. Ironically, the messages whose responses are the most important to me have to wait longer for me to write those responses, because at any specific time I am less likely to feel up to making them sufficiently good.

I didn't lose socks, even in communal college laundry, until I allowed others to become involved in doing my laundry. Where the lost socks went, I've no idea, especially given the large quantity that vanished. Now I've taken over my own laundry again; I've been drying some socks tonight. Unfortunately things are no longer in a sufficiently regular state that I can easily judge if normality has thus returned.

While I don't want to patronize you: you did check that the missing sock wasn't stuck to the top of the washing machine drum when damp after rinsing?

We have the added complication that our cat Pippin likes to ferret (or, er, cat) around in our clothing and pull things out and move them around. He'll find adult-sized pyjama trousers in the bedroom and drag them downstairs. I don't think he has a special hidden sock pile though.

Between me knowing I had the sock and knowing I'd lost the sock I didn't actually do any laundry (because no weekend intervened), so yes, I'm pretty sure that isn't how it got lost.