Bed Making 101

I made my bed this morning.  Yes, I realize that with the  possible exception of my mother, no one cares.  No one sees my bedroom other than my husband and me.  My husband insists that he prefers the bed unmade, “It’s just cozier.”  I secretly (okay, maybe it’s not such a secret) think he just says this so I won’t bug him to make the bed.  I haven’t always been a bed maker, despite the best efforts of my mother.  I never really saw the point, I mean sure, if I was putting clean sheets on, the bed got made, but otherwise, why bother?  It was just going to get messy again in a few hours.  Besides, our room was a mess, and our bed matched.

Our house is old and there are not a lot of closets, so we had a lot of things without a home, that got dumped in our room.  There were piles of old magazines and books, half finished and forgotten craft projects, clothes the kids (or I) had outgrown that were waiting to be donated, broken toys that were waiting to be fixed (or tossed when they were forgotten) and many other things.  It finally got to be too much and we cleaned it all out.  After all that work, I started making my bed, at least once in a while.  The first thing I noticed was it was really nice to have a place to fold the laundry.  The next thing I noticed was my room stayed clean.  Something as simple as making the bed made the room feel more like a bedroom and less like a dumping ground.  The other thing I noticed, was how much more relaxed I felt when I was in my room.

I still don’t make my bed every day (sorry mom!).  Some days the morning just gets away from me, I feel like the two minutes it would take to make the bed could be better spent doing something else.  But I noticed taking that small amount of time to do something for myself really gets my day off to a better start.  I don’t do hospital corners and I have no idea how to make a bed you can bounce a quarter on, to be honest, I’m not really even sure what that means.  Beds are bouncy, don’t quarters bounce on messy beds too?  But I think making my bed in the morning gets me off to a good start because I haven’t taken a shower, or left my room, but I’ve already accomplished something.

My room will never be featured in a magazine.  On HGTV everyone talks about how they want a “sun-drenched” room where the light flows in.  I don’t want that.  I sleep in my room.  I sleep better in the dark.  I have very heavy curtains that make my room more like the bat-cave than a light filled oasis.  I have an old afghan that my husband’s grandma made covering my bed.  I love it, but it would never be called trendy or even stylish.  Any designer in their right mind would  have to start over if they wanted to stage my bedroom.   My room isn’t for anyone else, except my husband, who also likes to sleep in the dark.  And making my bed isn’t for anyone else.  At this point in my life, with small children at home,  so much of what I do each day is for other people.  Making my bed is two minutes everyday when I do something just for me, turns out Mom was right, I should make my bed everyday.

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