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Lightening the load
I love a well dressed bed. I love the smell of clean sheets and I like a fresh duvet cover. It’s changing the bedclothes I hate. It is not a chore I find easy, so I approach it with dread.
I like using fitted sheets because I think they’re neater, but God are they a pain to put on. I buy them in the correct size for the bed but after one wash they shrink to make fitting them a major operation. Starting in one corner, I haul up the mattress with one hand, struggling with the effort, then when I’ve raised it sufficiently, I bolster it with my knee while trying to tuck the first corner underneath. Much huffing ad puffing ensues.
When I manage that I race to the bottom of the bed to get that corner done, pulling mightily to stretch it to fit. Sometimes that’s when the first side comes undone, leaving me fuming. Completing the process on the opposite side of the bed though is where the hard work really comes in. It’s also where I usually employ my entire repertoire of swear words. There are times when I even surprise myself, coming out with some new ones I didn’t know I knew.
My relief at getting the fitted sheet well, fitted, is short-lived because I know the duvet is waiting next to try my patience. I have never, ever, in my life put one on effortlessly. I have tried fitting them every possible way but never succeeded to get one on smoothly, in one go. It’s just not a one-person job. Not even a two-person job. I reckon it’d take four people to do it easily.
I wrap myself up in knots trying to do it by myself. I start off calmly enough, pulling one corner of the duvet up the length of the cover to the left-hand corner, repeating it on the right-hand side and then tugging up the middle bit. It’s after that it all goes pear-shaped. Or rather lumpy-shaped.
I try pulling the cover down the length of the duvet to fit the corners but it never works properly. I shrug it, tug it, whoosh it but it never goes right. I was doing this on Saturday, leaning in over the bed, grappling with it when my knees hit off the edge of the bed, sending me toppling into the middle of it and, in one fluid movement, head over heels and out onto the floor on the other side.
I lay sprawled on the ground laughing at how ridiculous I must have looked, thinking Basil Fawlty couldn’t have enacted a better comedy set piece if he’d tried. I decamped to the kitchen for a cup of tea before recommencing battle.
I’ve asked others how they do it. Everyone I’ve asked agrees it’s a pain-in-the-ass chore. And everyone has their own way of doing it, which they swear works. My sister demonstrated her way for me once but I thought it was even more laborious than my own and required much tugging and settling before it came right.
A friend called one evening when I was mid-battle and continued chatting to me as I wrestled with it. “Here, I’ve an easier way, give me that,” she commanded. I gladly handed over the duvet and cover and stood back ready and eager to see this mystery method that was going to make bed changing a doddle from now on. Her way was to turn the new cover inside out, pull the end of the duvet cover into position at the end and then reverse-wriggle it back down over it. “It’s much easier,” she assured me as she puffed and panted for the next ten minutes. “Simple!” she chirruped as she wrestled some more.
Next she got her knees onto the bed for added leverage as she continued her exertions. After another five minutes or so she had the duvet in the cover. “There. Easy-peasy,” she told me as she tried to smooth out a stubborn lump on one side. I was trying not to let her see me laugh.
I did some research on duvet changing, i.e. I Googled it and found, to my amazement, a dozen or more sites on the subject. There’s even a demonstration on YouTube. Who’d lead such a dull life that they’d spend time filming themselves fitting a duvet cover, I wondered. Seems to me they have bigger issues than their bedclothes looking tidy.
There’s only one thing for it in my view, and it’s something linen manufacturers could easily come up with. A duvet cover that opens out fully on three sides. You lay it on the bed, open it out, place the duvet on it, bring the other side over and fasten it and the top, preferably with Velcro strips so there’s no bloody buttons to fiddle with.
Now why hasn’t someone like those labour-saving gurus at Ikea thought of that? And, while they’re at it, could they please consider putting some extra elastic into the corners of fitted sheets for a bit more give?
It’d save so much time and hassle and help me conserve my swear words for when I really need them, like when I’m driving. Now that’s a whole other story.
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