I bought myself new socks recently. It was a purchase I spent more time thinking about than the last time I bought a car.

Cheap sweat socks are sold in six-packs for about $10, so that’s my baseline. I want all socks to cost that much. When I see a Lands’ End three-pack for $19, that seems like four times what they should cost, even though I know, because of the quality, it’s not a fair comparison.

For a moment, I looked into Smartwool casual socks, but they’re $25 a pair. Again, the issue of quality comes to mind, but are they really 15 times better than the cheap ones? I settled for getting a couple packs of black sweat socks.

Packaging for high-quality socks will make references to things such as “handlinked toe seams,” which are meant to be a benefit, but I start thinking about some person in China linking my toe seams by hand, and I don’t like that sweatshop image. I also start to think about the fuel needed to send a freighter full of socks across the ocean, then across the country to Duluth. Maybe those cheap socks come with too much baggage.

That thought compelled me to search for American-made socks, which led me to darntough.com. I wasn’t planning to actually purchase any, but the company makes (among many choices) the Annie Oakley Knee High Light for $22 a pair. Again, there’s the high price, but these socks look like cowboy boots. How fun is that? Considering they’re made in the U.S. and look super fun, I bought a pair.

Now I can test this “quality” theory. The website says the socks are “guaranteed for life,” and they apparently mean it. If I ever wear them out, their website says I can return them for a new pair. This gets me wondering how much it would cost to mail back a pair of socks, but the offer still seems sincere. My boss said she expects me to write an update in 10 years about whether I still have them.

Because of the price, because of the look and because of the laundry, there isn’t a lot of room in my life for fun socks. My life would be easier if all the socks in the house were black - the exact same black, exact same socks - because they’d all match. I have five people in my house who have feet close to the same size. We could get really extreme and have one kind of sock in the whole house (my dream come true!), but that’s probably not practical. Differences in preference and performance mean the communistic drawer of socks won’t fly.

A lot of the socks I already own are men’s socks that I found on clearance. The ones that make it to deep discounts tend to sport odd patterns and colors. This makes sorting easier, but recently, it has come up more often that I’d like my socks to match what I’m wearing.

So as it stands now, my sock drawer is filled with new, cheap, black sweat socks; weirdly colored clearance socks; and - in 5-10 days - one pair of $22 socks that look like cowboy boots. I have mixed-and-matched my desires not to spend money, to match, to buy quality products and to buy American. Can I say it’s literally a drawer full of anxieties?

Beverly Godfrey is a News Tribune copy editor. Write to her at bgodfrey@duluthnews.com.