Unsolved mysteries of our age

You do a washing, you lose a sock. Not a pair - just one. The process replicates itself over weeks and months and you end up, well I do anyway, with only about four pairs of socks and about seventeen odd ones.

I've tried everything. Bought socks that are all the same colour (black) to overcome the problem but it doesn't work: they shrink and fade at different rates and plus it doesn't seem to do anything to stem the flow of sock sacrifice to the voracious textile-eating monster that lives in your washing machine.

Having a child only exacerbates the problem: on average, the malevolent sock-eating god needs roughly seven children's socks per one adult sock.

While they're extremely cheap these days, the sheer scale of sock-haemorrhage is a financial burden as I have purchased several thousand socks in the last four years or so. Does anyone know of anything else that appeases the sock-consuming deity that lives behind your washing machine?