Tuesday's Tip: Keep the Sheets Tucked

It is a pain in the patooty to change my kids' sheets. 

Number one, because all three of them have loft beds, which means that one has to actually be on the bed in order to change the sheets.  Have you ever tried changing the sheets on a bed which you are currently occupying?  It's not easy.  Try it.  You'll see.  Your body weight pushes down on the mattress making it very difficult to tuck anything under, not to mention the impossibility of getting wrinkles out.  It is quite the ordeal.

And number two, well, you don't need a number two, because number one is reason enough. 

Is it any wonder I try to avoid changing sheets on those beds as much as possible?

The trouble is, the beds don't stay made.  The sheets and blankets end up in a tangled mess after just a few days.  All that effort...wasted.

I noticed an interesting thing, though, and that is, the farther under the mattress you tuck those sheets and blankets, the more likely they are to stay tucked.

I noticed something else.  If you place twin-sized blankets perpendicular to a twin size bed, they cover nearly the whole bed, from head to foot.

Let's put those two facts together to see if we can solve that problem, shall we?

Here's what to do.

Over the fitted sheet, place the flat sheet the regular way, which leaves an overhang of 8-12" per side.
 

Place the blankets perpendicular to the bed, leaving an overhang of about 3 feet on the long sides of the bed.  See how they stretch nearly the whole length of the bed, head to foot?  If your kids are taller than mine, you can even alternate the way you place the blankets so you get full coverage lengthwise.

Fold down the sheet at the head of the bed, sandwiching the blankets and keeping them together.
 

Tuck everything in.  That means there are around 2.5 feet of blanket tucked under the mattress on each side--the two ends of the blankets meet under the mattress.  (If your bed is up in the air, stand on a stepstool or chair and lift the mattress up to get the sheets under.  If your bed is on the floor, you can just lift the mattress up).  That's not coming untucked very easily.

Cover the whole thing with a bedspread and you should be good to go for a couple of weeks.

Oh, and the number two reason it's a pain in the patooty to make my kids' beds?  The twenty gazillion stuffed animals, books, legos, socks and other miscellaneous items that find their way into the kids' beds that need to be removed and then replaced... Oy!