Practically Speaking: Making the bed in which you lie

“You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”

              -English idiom

On the topic of practical household activity, we previously considered a place to start: the kitchen sink. Or, more accurately wherever dirty dishes may be found, the place to start being depositing them in the sink in order to turn over a new leaf in the realm of cleanliness and good living. The key to happiness in this venture is clearing the sink of dishes at the end of the night and starting the next day with a clean slate, a process captured by the charming expression “putting the kitchen to bed.”

Having considered actions related to one of the primary daily activities of life, eating, let us turn to another: sleep. Once the kitchen is tidied, you turn your wearied self, of course, to the bedroom. What awaits you there? Piles of unfolded clothes so long forgotten that you can no longer distinguish the clean from the dirty, stacks of abandoned books and half-finished projects, mountains of those mysterious odds and ends that pile up without an explanation of whence they came or whither they should go?

There are few feelings so discouraging as turning in for the night, or intending to, and finding heaps of forgotten things preventing you from resting your weary head on a pillow and covering yourself with a relatively clean sheet and blanket that induces a comfortable degree of warmth. What a luxury we give ourselves when we ensure that our bed is ready and uncluttered throughout the day so that it may serve us profitably when the hour of rest is upon us.

After making the detritus of the kitchen a priority, it is wise next to turn to the bed. This vehicle of rejuvenation and dreams requires very little active care. At the beginning, you can aim simply for relatively clean sheets, nothing too lofty. Some people are known to insist on sheets being cleaned weekly as a matter of principle. These people, however, have also been known to employ maids or suffer from cleaning-related neuroses. For most people, at least most people with small children and other labor intensive hobbies in life, every-other-week washing seems adequate to ensure general cleanliness.

The bed coverings and decorations may seem unnecessary or mysterious, but many of them have a comprehensible history and a purpose. Academic research into bedding is not necessary. Simply ensure that the bedspread is serving you well, keep it in order, and set it up to be utilized nightly. Much more could be said here, and we haven’t even touched on pillows, but you get the general idea. Like the dishes, turning one’s thoughts to the bed and what resides there—focusing with loving attention on the space in which we sleep—can make a change in us and our homes.

From here, there are personal preference questions about airing out the beds, making them right away, not making them at all, or employing decorative pillows. These are all interesting but potentially distracting questions. Our first task is to have a basic bed and keep it basically clean and tidy.

Once you’ve sorted out what the bed should be, all that’s required is to keep things off it. For mothers at home this is easier said than done given the comings and goings of the day. But to preserve that space for golden slumbers is a gift to yourself.

All this talk of made beds and tidy sleeping spaces may be shrugged aside by the woefully misguided contingent that views unkempt homes a sign of “creativity.” Our culture chalks a lot of vice and ugliness up to evidence of creativity, but the fact is, you’re not an artistic genius or a rarefied mathematician. There is nothing about getting less sleep and having to move armfuls of unfolded laundry to find your pillow that makes you happier or more productive in your creative outlets. Most likely, having an untidy living space in which things are continually lost results in wasted time more than anything else.

The idiomatic expression about making beds begins with the real-world experience of bed-making and its real consequences. Searching for peace and order can begin in the home as well as the heart.