You make your own bed…maybe

I had a friend in high school that swore that you never needed to wash two things: bath towels and bed sheets.  His logic was decent.  “Think about it.  You take a shower, you’re clean.  And you dry yourself off with just water, and water isn’t dirty so you never need to wash your towels.  And then if you shower just before you go to bed, you always go to bed clean so your sheets never get dirty either.”

(He’s still not married, that I know of.)

I always appreciated his logic but knew there was no merit to it.  But it didn’t stop there.  “You never really have to make your bed.  Just pile up the blankets at the bottom so it looks neat enough, and just recover yourself at night.”  

This was logic I could appreciate.  I hate making the bed.  It is the most worthless chore I have ever encountered, and I have encountered quite a few.  

I know it doesn’t take long, and my husband assures me he appreciates getting into a neatly made bed at night.  I can’t see the value in it, but that’s probably because my eyes are usually closed midair on the way to the pillow.  So unless he makes it, or we are expecting house guests who might wander past my bedroom door, my bed is forever unmade.

And as another wise friend recently told me, I am doing a noble thing by having unkempt bedrooms.  I am protecting my family from asthma and allergens.  He referenced a study done by Kingston University a few years back that reports that having unmade beds can actually make you healthier.

The study states that it all has to do with dust mites, these really itty bitty disgusting little creatures that feed on the flakes of human skin that accumulate in bed sheets, which is a fact gross enough to make us all go and wash our sheets immediately, even my old friend.  These little critters with their ferocious looking body parts don’t really need to drink any water—they just absorb the moisture from the air through their bodies.  When we make our beds, we are trapping tiny bits of moisture underneath those covers and (gulp) inside those flakes of human skin.  That lovely humid environment that we created as we tucked in those covers is like a haven for the dust mites, a cozy place where they have all of the moisture and skin they need to live and reproduce.

Then they gather and have little dust mite parties and when we slip in between the sheets, we are absolutely not invited.  But we deal with its aftermath, which they report as asthma and allergies caused by those little dudes not cleaning up from their merrymakings and inviting their friends to live with them.  Forever.

The study continues that if we simply leave our beds unmade, we can prevent these creepy celebrations.  When we leave the covers off, there’s no trapped moisture and even those delicious, delectable bits of skin blow away making a very inhospitable place for the mites.

Dead skin aside, I think that’s all the fodder I need to further my argument for not making the bed, and if my old friend should ever be visiting and have a comment about the blankets piled up at the foot, I will be ready to aim and fire with the apparent scientific cause as to why my sleeping place is in shambles.  I will, however, go on to explain that the sheets are clean.  Very clean.  Skin free and laundered regularly with all of my bath towels.