I’ll tell you a secret: I cannot fold sheets. I just don’t have the attention span. I get bored halfway through folding one sheet. Actually one of my aims in life is to avoid folding anything at all. As a result I have always had a tangled mess of sheets and pillowcases and towels hidden away in a cupboard somewhere.
When I change my sheets, I like to take the sheets off the bed, leave the bedding to air and put fresh sheets on just before I go to bed. This means that when I am making the bed I am tired and half asleep and not even slightly in the mood to root through a tangled mess looking for pillowcases that match. This leads to swearing, and night time grumpiness, and has been known to make my husband sit on the floor and declare that he is giving up on life entirely.
Recently I was trying to put away our shiny new bedsheets that we got as wedding presents and I realised… I cannot put them in with the tangled mess and something must be done. So I took all of the things out of the cupboard and picked out some to throw out and then started trying to fold things and lost the will to live halfway through folding my first duvet cover. And that was when I had the little revelation, which is this: Find a matching set. Take three of the pillowcases, the duvet cover and the sheet and put them into the other pillowcase. The outer pillowcase will show you what set it is, and all of the things will be right there! No hunting around late at night when all you want to do is sleep! No folding things! No tangled mess!
This is such a simple silly tiny thing but it has made me so unreasonably happy (I phoned my husband from work just to tell him to go and look in the cupboard and admire my genius) that I thought I would share it, in case there is anyone else out there who doesn’t have all of their sheets perfectly folded and organised. There must be someone, right?
I’ve been doing this for a few years, but it is not so easy when you have flannel sheets. If you fold the pillowcase down about half-way, it makes it easier to package everything in that pillowcase and then fold the sides back up.
Also, a lot of times I just plain don’t want to fold the fitted sheet, so once they’re laundered, I just put the same sheets back on the bed! No folding necessary!
THIS IS BRILLIANT. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it as I’m terrible at folding fitted sheets with elastic on all four sides, but it’s worth a try!
I don’t fold them at all, I just bundle them up and shove them in a pillowcase. It’s much less neat than the picture but I don’t care if they’re crumpled because hello, I’m going to sleep on them.
No folding ftw!
We put the same sheets back on the bed, since we have one set of sheets that is really pretty and goes with our quilt (complete coincidence, actually — we specified nothing about bedroom colour-scheme, and both the sheets and the quilt were gifts, and they came from people who didn’t know each other…), and the other sheet set clashes with the quilt… However, I do use the bags that all our bedding came in (the thick clear plastic zippered ones are my favourite) to keep my linen closet organized — one bag has all our napkins, another has spare tea towels, and so on.
I use the bedding bags to contain small items in my suitcase when traveling! And a comforter bag can store like 4 smaller blankets or 5 jackets!
ah hah
I am champion at folding fitted sheets.
http://www.marthastewart.com/269141/how-to-fold-a-fitted-sheet
(martha has her uses sometimes)
I have my own way of doing this ‘cuz I could never get the hang of adding the 3rd & 4th corners to the first 2. Put the first two corners together. The, since I don’t have three hands, I hold those first two corners in my teeth which I put the 3rd & 4th corners together. It works for me!
Growing up we always folded fitted sheets using the buddy system. Much easier when you have another person.
I do this, too. Folding sheets with teeth FTW! 🙂
My mother was a master fitted sheet folder and she taught me something similar. I put corners 1&2 together and then 3&4 and then take the two nested sets and put them all together.
BUT
Mine don’t come out as nice as my mother’s or Martha’s. I do this all standing up, against my chest so to speak, and watching this video makes me think I might get better results if I lay it down.
The grand master fitted sheet folder in the family is my aunt ( my mother’s sister ). But to get her results she irons her sheets as she folds them. (Yes, irons.) I am not that committed to the cause.
Just reading the title of this post, I almost fainted from happiness. I am THIS CLOSE to an organized closet! My mother in law said to me one day, “Here’s what every woman needs to know before her wedding day.” And then she taught me how to fold fitted sheets into a small, compact shape and it changed my life. Here it is illustrated by none other than… Martha, of course! http://youtu.be/Q-a2FR1iwqg
Yeah, I use the Martha method. ALSO I don’t put matched sheets on the bed anymore…. Stripes+ flowers+paisley? Adorable! Try it out, it makes the bedroom look grownup but still have some fun when you fold down the comforter.
I use the “martha method” also, although my mom taught me way before martha was on tv! In addition to doing that, I set my folded pillowcases on top of the fitted sheet, and fold my flat sheet into a long strip, which I roll the rest of the sheets into sort of like a burrito! Then I grab one “sheet burrito” and I know everything I need is inside.
You know it’s a BASKETS! Moment when I immediately forward the link to my mother.
I learnt this, and rolling towels into “burritos” from a friend years ago, but struggle to keep it up. Bedding bags are however awesome and I use them for the spare set of loose covers for the sofa, storing the thick comforter over summer, and winter clothing. Just add a sprig of lavender, or rosemary and they are so nice come the cold weather.
I’ve discovered that satin sheets are too slippery to EVER stay folded. At this point, I just roll em into a ball and stuff em into one of the pillowcases and call it a day.
Oh my goodness. My son’s sheets are done this way, so I’m not sure why I never put it together and did this for the sheets in the linen closet. Genius! I’m doing it when I get home today.
This is mind-shatteringly brilliant.
My stunning knack for folding fitted sheets doesn’t impress the cat who believes in tidying himself away into the same closet when he wants privacy. It would be a great improvement to have the cat knock one pillowcase package onto the closet floor, rather than unfurling a whole mess of sheets.
My fitted sheets look exactly like the woman in the Martha video! I HATE those fitted sheets. I’m so going home and trying the fitted sheet trick and the pillow cases.
I use a similar method, except I fold the pillow cases up in the middle of the fitted sheet (I don’t use a flat sheet – just fitted/duvet in cover/pillow cases), so when I pull out the sheet, the cases come with it. No hunting required.
That IS genius! I can’t wait to start getting wedding gifts in so we have more than the set of sheets that’s on the bed now to do that with!
YOU ARE SO SMART.