How to Fold a Fitted Sheet: 10 reasons this course isn’t for me
Hydro polls at Toronto’s Pape and Danforth began 2025 screaming “How to Fold a Fitted Sheet.” For your $10, in one hour, you could wow yourself and your friends with a new skill. I imagine an event in someone’s living room, all 10 attendees sipping wine from stemless glasses to avoid spillage while whipping bedlinens into submission. Other than the wine, which is my embellishment, I cannot think of anything more tedious. And less useful for me.
Every month, more than 40,000 people type “how to fold a fitted sheet” into their search engine. My new friend, Google AI, tells me these 40,000 are concerned about: eliminating unsightly wrinkles; minimizing storage; making stored sheets easier to get access to; improving the look of the cupboard; preserving the lifespan of the sheets; and looking like a “composed and put-together person.” Kudos to my Danforth friend - she’s clearly onto something.
Here are 10 reasons why it’s not for me.
1. I have better things to do with my time
The week is just 168 hours long. After sleeping, working, transit, cooking and eating, life maintenance, and walking, I have about 38 hours for writing and reading and doomscrolling and talking on the phone and gazing out the window and watching stuff on CBC Gem and and and…
Life is very short. Sheets can be wrinkly.
2. I have better things to do with my money
I’m not hard up, but I am careful with how I spend money. Most of it goes on property-related expenses, debt-servicing, and food. My entertainment budget is carefully doled out. There’s a lot of things I’d sooner do with $10 than communal faffing with linens.
3. Those attending are likely not my kind of people
I don’t turn down chances to meet people these days, after Jack’s illness and death followed by COVID turned my social circle into a few scattered arcs. I could, therefore, view a night of sheet-folding a social opportunity. However, it’s my suspicion I wouldn’t have much in common with the attendees. Just saying.
4. I don’t have any storage space for sheets
Linen closets are like nature - they both abhor a vacuum. When I lived in my three bedroom house, mine was choc-a-block. During Jack’s illness I found a store, Titus and Louise (now sadly closed), for retail therapy. I love to luxuriate in a newly-made bed, six down-filled pillows behind my head, drinking in the freshness of new, line-dried, high-thread-count sheets. During chemo, I soothed myself with a T&L yellow linen duvet cover. Our elopement was marked with another trip to T&L, this time for off-white linen sheets - you haven’t really lived until you’ve slept in real linen.
In 560 square feet, however, nothing comes in without something going out. My tenants now use the legacies of my buying binges. They can fold them as they wish.
5. I don’t care what things look like in storage
If you’d ever looked into that packed linen closet in my big house, you’d know I was its organizational architect. Oh sure, there was a vague sense of order - sheets stacked on one shelf, a pile of pillow cases in the space beside, pillows on the top shelf, towels below. But despite all my efforts, I just don’t have the dexterity or the will to beautify something behind a closed door.
6. I don’t believe neatly folded sheets will outlast sheets crumpled in a ball
I’m all for making things endure - indeed, many of my favourite things, still in use, are decades old, including linens - but I simply don’t buy AI’s contention that fabric that’s neatly folded will last longer. This is not my first disagreement with AI.
7. I don’t link my self-image to the appearance of my linen closet
I wrote this and then reflected on the statement. Maybe I DO link my self-image in part to the appearance of my linen closet, just not the way Marie Kondo would. I wouldn’t want the world to think of me as someone who has neatly folded sheets. I hope this post will correct any impression you’ve had to the contrary!
8. I don’t aspire to being a “composed and put-together person”
This one’s a bit trickier. In some ways, I would like to be seen as composed and put-together. As an advocate for social change, for example, I’d want that impression since flighty doesn’t cut it when you’re trying to make a point. But I’d hate anyone to be left with the impression I’m buttoned down (or up.) And I don’t think anyone would. Please don’t tell me if you do.
9. It’s too late for me to learn such a skill
So here’s the real kicker - although I consider myself a life-long learner, my ability to learn and remember a manual sequence is not as it once was. I see this with new technology - I can figure out a way to do things over time, but I can’t replicate what someone else has done. I think this wasn’t always the case (but my memory may be slipping too…) I’d forget the folding technique by laundry day.
10. I have just one set of sheets
And finally, perhaps the most significant reason, I have only one set of sheets. I take them off, I wash them, and I put them back on again, all in the same day. No folding needed!
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