Who knew making the bed was such a polarizing subject?
Well, I did, because I hear people piss and moan about it every single day. There’s been a significant uptick in posts about bed-making all over the internet lately, mostly in response to Admiral William McRaven’s commencement speech at the University of Texas at Austin. And the comments on every single one of those posts are so predictable as to be actually pretty hilarious to me.
So here are my answers to the most common comments found on any article about bed-making.
It’s a waste of time because I’m just getting back in it anyway.
Why wash your dishes? You’re just going to use them again, right? Why throw your trash away? Aren’t you just going to make more trash later? Well, by resetting one thing to a point of being clean or even just slightly neater-looking, you’re that much further ahead in the unfucking game.
You deserve to have your home be as nice for you as you make it for guests.
It takes too long. I don’t have time for that in the morning.
Hang on, making my bed and timing it. One minute, eight seconds. And that was with tucking the sheets under the mattress, which I don’t always do.
This is one of the most common arguments against making your bed. Let’s see what the CDC has to say. Or the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. Huh, nothing against bed-making there.
If you feel that letting your mattress “breathe” will make an empirical difference on the number of dust mites present in your bedding (although frequent washing in hot water, mattress and pillow enclosures, and vacuuming your mattress are the recommended courses of action for reducing dust mites in the bed), then simply fold your bedding neatly at the end of your bed, leaving the bottom sheet and pillows exposed to the air. A rumpled bed with the sheets and blankets still mostly covering the bottom sheet is no more “airing out” the bed than a made bed.
I’m just going to go ahead and quote myself here, because I’ve talked about this so much that I have nothing new to say on the subject.
No matter what excuse you have for not making your bed, I’ve heard it before and repeatedly, so really, don’t even bother replying to the post with it because I promise you it’s been done a million times before. Including but not limited to: I’m still in it, someone else is in it, a cat is in it, a dog is in it, I’m at work, I’m at school, I’m in another timezone, I sleep on the couch, I have a futon, I sleep in a hammock, I’m at a hotel, I never went to bed last night, my sheets are in the wash, I can’t find my pillows, I’m in outer space and we sleep in pods without bed linens, I read half a study one time that said you shouldn’t make your bed, I don’t wanna, I’m too good for that, I don’t see the point, I think it’s stupid, you’re not my real mom, you’re not the boss of me, and fuck off, UfYH. If you aren’t going to make your bed, you don’t need to tell me. It’s OK. You’re an adult. You can make your own decisions.
Making your bed doesn’t have to be a whole involved process. Just straighten your sheets and pull your blankets up. Arrange the pillows if you’re feeling ambitious. Not every part of every system is going to be applicable to everyone. It doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful for some. Many people on Team UfYH aren’t ready for a full-scale unfucking just yet, but they can make their bed. Every day. And then maybe tomorrow, they’ll be ready to do the day’s challenge.
