We all have certain chores that we don’t mind doing. Some people prefer washing dishes over vacuuming or taking out the trash over dusting the shelves. If you have more than one person at home, these tasks can be split up accordingly.
But when you live alone, all of these tasks fall to you. And aside from picking up that one string the vacuum refused to pick up, I have to say one thing I find extremely tedious is changing the sheets on my bed.
Let’s examine the process.
It starts with simply ripping off the covers and throwing the pillows and blankets in a heap on the floor with dramatic flair—and about 1/100th of the time it will take me to remake the bed.
It’s at this point I realize there’s no turning back and swallow a small lump of panic. With the old sheets in the basket and the new sheets still folded in a pile, I am now committed to following through with the process if I want to sleep on sheets ever again.
Ever again!
Exhausted by the thought, I take the sheets from the shelf and let them rest on the bed for a bit while I rest for a bit on my own.
I will usually get (intentionally) distracted by something more interesting like watching the squirrels and cursing Disney movies for leaving me so disillusioned about small woodland creatures and their willingness to help me with chores.
But I steel myself up and return to my task, plowing through the bottom sheet and two pillows and fighting with the corners of death.
You know what I’m talking about.
The only thing harder than fitting the elastic-ish corners of the bottom sheet across each of the four ends of the mattress without one popping off every time is actually folding the bottom sheet when it comes out of the dryer.
Tedious.
Enter a quick break to test out the sheets and pillows, at which point I stare at the ceiling and decide I should probably wipe off the ceiling fan at that exact minute.
About 20 minutes later I continue on with my journey of placing the top sheet on with equal amounts of sheet on either side of the bed.
But no matter how hard I try, I end up walking back multiple times to pull the sheet a little bit more on one side before tucking it under the mattress.
If it’s too short on one side, I end up pulling the whole thing out when I get into bed. If I pull it too far up the front, my feet will poke out of the bottom and there’s a good chance I’ll wake up with the excess sheet wrapped around my head and panic that the cat’s trying to smother me.
Yup, still single, people.
Anyway, once sheet side distribution is complete, I triumphantly throw on the blanket with the flair of a matador waving his flag. After ensuring equal blanket distribution—see sheet step above—the task is finally complete a mere 45 minutes or so later.
Holy sheet.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it, but at least now the bed will have sheets.
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