Folding a Fitted Sheet (and other Linen Organisation)
This week we are focusing on tidying up our sheets. This is a category I really enjoy, although don’t talk to my lovely client J about the time I said, “Tell you what, why don’t we go for a quick win with the linen cupboard?!” and we crawled out 5 hours later on our knees, utterly exhausted, having almost ended up in A&E with an eye injury due to a sewing machine malfunction.
So, as usual, gather together all your sheets, pillow cases, pillows, duvet covers, duvets, blankets, throws and anything else that you might use to make up beds.
I hope that after 17 weeks of practice, that your Joy Radar is becoming more sensitive and that you are beginning to understand the part that your body plays in this. I am frequently asked about the whole Spark Joy thing and people being worried that they are not “getting” it. I always suggest at the beginning of a category they start with the easy wins; the things that they love. If you love it, pick it up and take a moment to contemplate it. Often when my clients are handling things that Spark Joy, I’ll see it in their faces; a lightening of expression, a smile. On the other hand, I can see where they struggle too, frowns, or a tone of voice that gives away their uncertainty over an object. Listen to your body as you choose what to keep and remember that not only that you are aiming for a life of Joy, but also that YOU deserve a life of Joy.
In linens, I find a lot of, “Just in case”. People don’t want to let go of the extra pillows, or sets of linen in case they need them for guests, or illness. As well as Spark Joy, I have two practical suggestions here. The first is to remember that it is frequently possible to borrow if you need them, or people are even often happy to bring their own. The second is to work out how many beds you have in your house and what the maximum number that you are likely to need at any one time is.
For example, in my house, we have one king sized bed. Then each of the 4 children have their own single bed and in addition to that, there are 4 trundle beds and a futon mattress that might be made up at any one time. So that is a total of 9 single beds that might be made up at any one time, although at least two of those can be made up as a single king size instead. Whilst we do frequently have guests (obviously not in the time of corona though!), we do not have them anywhere near as often as we simply live in the house ourselves. Many of our duvets are the type that are “multiple season”, so ones where you have two duvets that stick together and these can easily be split for guests (in Scotland it has to be said that our guests are more frequent in Summer than in Winter, can’t think why…).
We have 2 sets of king-sized sheets, each child has 2 sets of sheets and then there are 3 spare sets. I’m sure that you can do the maths to see that we have as many as we’ll ever need whilst only ever really having a few sitting in the linen cupboard.
As for storage, that is up to you, but I thought that I would share 2 videos that I did last year that demonstrate how to fold a fitted sheet and the first one shows them how I store complete sets within a pillow case. The second one is a demonstration of how to fold a fully elasticated sheet.
Good luck, and let me know how you get on!