I’m 70. Why Am I Still Wrestling With a Fitted Sheet?

What if the real freedom of retirement is questioning all the little rules you never chose in the first place?

I’m 70. Why Am I Still Wrestling With a Fitted Sheet?

For the past three nights, I have slept on top of my bedspread.

Not under it.

On top of it.

My grandson had been visiting and sleeping in my bed whiled I slept in my studio on one those fabulous air mattresse .

After he left, I had neither the time nor the inclination to strip the whole thing down and start over.

And changing the sheets on my bed is not a small undertaking.

My daybed sits against the wall. To change the fitted sheet, I have to remove the mattress from the bed, wrestle it into submission, hook the sheet around all four corners, shove the mattress back into place, and then recover from the experience.

So I looked at the bed and thought:

Screw it.

I climbed on top of the bedspread, pulled another blanket over myself, grabbed the same feather pillow I have slept on for approximately twenty years, and went to sleep.

The next morning, something remarkable happened.

My bed was already made.

And I had slept beautifully.

Deeply rested. Restored.

Which, unless I have misunderstood the entire purpose of sleep, is what the bed was supposed to accomplish in the first place.

All I had to do was fold the blanket.

I stood there staring at it.

Well, hell.

Why haven’t I been doing this?

Well I HAD to have an answr to THAT question, so down the rabbit hole I went!

Who decided a properly dressed bed needed a fitted sheet, a top sheet, a blanket, another blanket, a bedspread, a comforter, a coverlet, and enough decorative pillows to furnish a small sofa showroom?

Have you seen some of these enormous luxury bedrooms?

The bed has fourteen pillows on it.

Fourteen.

You need a staging crew before you can go to sleep.

At night, somebody has to remove the pillows, arrange them somewhere else, pull back six layers of fabric, climb into the bed, sleep for eight hours, and then reconstruct the whole architectural project the following morning.

For what?

And who is coming?

The Queen is dead.

Nobody is inspecting the premises.

And yet I understand the appeal because I love a beautifully made bed.

I do.

There is something deeply satisfying about walking into a bedroom and seeing everything smooth and tucked and lovely.

But lately I’ve started distinguishing between something I enjoy and something I have simply been trained to maintain.

Those are not always the same thing.

Historically, all those layers actually had a purpose.

Sheets protected mattresses and blankets that were difficult or expensive to clean. Blankets provided warmth. Bed coverings protected valuable bedding. Curtains around beds helped trap heat.

Fine.

People were cold.

People didn’t have washing machines.

People were sleeping on mattresses filled with feathers, wool, straw, and God knows what else.

But somewhere along the way, necessity became tradition, tradition became propriety, and propriety became another little domestic rule women learned to follow without anybody bothering to ask whether it still made sense.

The original reason disappeared.

The obedience remained.

Even now, I have this absurd little voice somewhere in my head that knows what a “properly made bed” looks like.

Apparently there is an invisible committee.

They have standards. And as well know from decades of lving, standards must be kept.

I would very much like to that invisible committee.

Because I have questions.

Why am I wrestling a fitted sheet onto a mattress against the wall when I am seventy years old and nobody on earth cares?

Why am I spending perfectly good energy maintaining something that gives me almost nothing in return?

Why do I need decorative layers on something whose primary purpose is to hold my sleeping body?

And why, when we finally reach the years everybody keeps calling our “golden years,” are we still dragging all these old rules along with us?

That part interests me far more than the bed.

Because the bed is just one tiny example.

How many things do we continue doing because we have always done them?

Holiday traditions we no longer enjoy.

Social obligations we dread.

Clothes we think women our age are supposed to wear.

Household rituals nobody notices but us.

Ways we spend our time because some old version of “a good woman” is still standing in the corner with a clipboard.

We reach retirement, supposedly the great age of freedom, and then proceed to carry half the rulebook from 1978 right into it with us.

Well, I would like to review the rulebook.

Page by page.

Because some of this stuff has expired.

Take my pillow.

I have used the same feather pillow for twenty years.

It is not impressive.

It does not look like it belongs in a magazine.

I could not care less.

I love that pillow.

I can punch it, fold it, squish it, tuck it under my neck, flatten one side, puff up the other, and get exactly the support I want.

When I travel, the pillow goes with me.

I will leave shoes behind before I leave that pillow.

That pillow has earned tenure.

It works for me.

And I think I’ve reached the age when “it works for me” is a perfectly respectable answer.

I don’t need the aesthetically correct pillow.

I don’t need the fashionable pillow.

I don’t need the pillow recommended by somebody on Instagram with a beige bedroom and no visible electrical cords.

I need my old feather pillow.

Apparently I also may not need half the bedding I have been dutifully arranging for decades.

This morning I got up, folded my blanket, and looked at my perfectly presentable bed.

Ten seconds.

Done.

And I felt ridiculously pleased with myself.

Not because I had discovered some revolutionary new sleeping system.

People have been sleeping under one blanket since the beginning of people.

I was pleased because I had questioned something.

Something tiny.

Something ordinary.

Something I had never thought to question before.

And that is becoming one of my favorite things about getting older.

I get to ask:

Why am I still doing this?

Do I actually like it?

Does it serve me?

Does it make my life easier, richer, prettier, more comfortable, more interesting?

Or am I doing it because some woman in my family did it, because society handed it to me, because good housekeeping demanded it, or because I never realized stopping was an option?

Those are very different things.

Retirement freedom is not only having permission to do what we want.

Sometimes it is finally noticing how many things we never had to do in the first place.

I still like a beautiful bed.

I simply no longer believe I owe anybody one.

Tonight I will climb back onto my bedspread, pull one blanket over myself, fluff my ancient feather pillow into exactly the shape my neck wants, and go to sleep.

Tomorrow morning, I will fold the blanket.

And somewhere, I am certain, the Invisible Committee of Properly Made Beds will clutch its pearls.

They’ll survive.

If this kind of questioning is what you’re here for, the old rules, the inherited expectations, the things we’ve carried for years without asking whether they still belong to us, you’re welcome to become a paid subscriber.

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