That's exactly why you should not blindly follow things though. There is literally no advantage to a nicely made bed except that it looks nice. If that is not worth the effort of making the bed, then why would you do it?
it has an advantage for your mental health, because it helps your mood to know you have finished a task, have a routine, and cleaning.
Having to make my bed has a negative effect on my mental health. But yes, that's why I said to evaluate it individually.
It might for you. It does nothing for me.
Doing unnecessary stuff irks me in ways I can’t describe.
Because we are smart and value time.
I can't stand actual pointless crap that wastes our lives.
But if it makes you happy, go for it I say.
It doesn't help my mental health to do a pointless task.
This isn't true for everyone... Did you know that?
For some of us, it's punishment. Punishment to keep things nice only for others.
I can see this, for certain folks. To me, I'd be mad that I'm wasting time on something totally pointless when I could be doing anything else far higher up on my importance meter.
Contrary to what JP says mental health isn't tied to a clean bedroom, or in this case a made bed.
This really depends on the person. For some, there's benefit to the ritual and then again for the "tidy" bed occupying their space. For others, it doesn't matter.
My personal opinion is if you tend to not be in your bedroom except to sleep then it doesn't matter, but if you spend much time in there then making the bed is beneficial.
If those are the advantages then the same advantages could be accomplished by daily filling a cup with water, pouring out the water, drying the glass and putting it back in the cupboard. I'd argue the cup with water is far less effort and yields the same results.
I make my bed purely because my wife likes it that way. I'm not bothered either way, but I do it because it's important to her.
She wakes up before I do and goes to bed before I do. I make the bed nice and tidy when I eventually wake up so she has a nice neat bed to climb into at night.
it feels nice to me anyway, a cluttered bed makes me anxious. plus tucking yourself into a made bed is such a nice feeling rather than trying to find your sheets in the mess
The process of making your bed confers several hygiene benefits.
For starters, we release a ton of water when we sleep, both through sweat and exhalation. A made bed dries more efficiently
Making the bed also has the effect of shaking loose skin and hair that came off us throughout the night, and casting it to the floor. This is especially true if you use the objectively correct technique of grabbing the corners and flipping your bedding up into the air so that it settles down into place like a parachute
Takes five seconds, looks nice as you noted, and has many other mental and social benefits we haven’t even touched on. For one of many examples, if I go to a guy’s place, I’m not gonna be inclined to get into his bed if he “won” the bed-making argument with his parents and stuck with that philosophy ever since
Edit: Tyler thinks you’re too stupid to actually read his linked study. The fact that he needs to lie about something so easy to verify tells you everything you need to know about his alternative theories about reality
Wait what? Making the bed does the opposite. It traps the moisture in the bed, meaning it dries less, causing it to smell more. How the hell would making the bed cause it to dry better, that’s complete nonsense.
Edit: for those that don't believe me, this has already been studied. Making your bed traps moisture. It's honestly crazy to think that closing up a damp environment somehow makes it dry faster.
Think of it this way, if you soaked your entire mattress in water and then put it out in the sun, is it going to dry faster if you just leave it there or if you cut it open and expose all the insides?
You’re wondering why a completely flat piece of fabric with maximal surface area exposed to the air dries faster than one that’s bunched up and covering itself multiple times? Are there any other situations you can think of where things dry better bunched up rather than splayed out? Towels, swimsuits, tarps, tents?
Who mentioned smell by the way? Is your bedding noticeably smelly?
Huh? Maybe this is a country difference. If I make the bed, there’s going to be more than 3 layers of fabric on top of the sheets that were actually touching my body. There is zero chance in hell of those sheets drying faster covered up. The sheets being pulled back to expose the area that was actually touching my body is what allows it to dry.
I just counted, if I made the bed each morning I’d be trapping the bed sheets under at least 8 other layers of fabric. A comforter, a weighted blanket, and sometimes another blanket. The weighted blanket alone has 5 layers to it, the comforter 3.
It's also good to not make your bed, the warmth keeps the little pesky allergy generating beasts alive and reproductive (they still do, but less or so I have heard).
If you sweat like a pig (I sometimes do), don't make your bed but hang your comforter(I guess that is the word, duvet ?) on some chair instead, and wash it when needed.
That said, do as you please, the cops can't stop you!
I learned early in life (from ocd parenting figures) that you have to set a certain level of clean you need in your life to how much of your life is taken up by it.
I know people who spend their entire waking hours cleaning. Can't have 1 dirty dish. Floor cannot have a spec. Lawn must be pure green grass so kill all dandelions and any "weed" (also this is terrible for the environment but anyway). All glass absolutely spotless. Its sad how much of their life they spend just cleaning, to me anyway.
I just have a rule that I don't let things be disgusting. Do I have dishes in the sink? Yes. Is it overflowing and molding? No. I vacuum and sweep maybe once every couple weeks or if it gets visually dirty faster.
I have way more important things in life than keeping things spotlessly clean.
Making a bed? Never done once in adult life. Complete waste of time for me. washing bedsheets and blankets, obviously yes we have to do that.
I just have a rule that I don’t let things be disgusting.
Some people who spend their entire waking hours cleaning believe exactly the same as you. They just have different thresholds of "disgusting". My in-laws are like that. I'm much closer to you; where I can easily accept untidy, but not dirty.
Yeah exactly. I dont allow visible dirtyness basically. So some dust, whatever. Actual dirt or mud or food crumbs? Yeah I'll clean that.
3 dishes in sink? Its fine. 20 dishes and sink is full? Yes we need to do dishes.
It also depends on the area. I clean my kitchen more than the basement.
Okay... But...
If you have a comforter, and you don't give a fuck, it doesn't matter.
I speak from experience. Me and my partner never make our beds. Not ever. We're happy.
Growing up somewhere cold with usually just enough blankets, I would often need to wrap the blankets around me to fully trap the heat. When the sheets are solidly tucked in, you have to rip them out before you can wrap.
I am basically never comfortable in a made bed. If I visit a friend and the guest bed has the sheets tucked in, I have this low level subconscious response of “I guess that’s one more thing I have to deal with now.” Not that they are wrong for doing it, but it does grate a tiny bit versus sleeping at home.
Haha, I have the same feeling for opposite reasons. I grew up in a warmer environment but kept my feet against the cool exterior wall my bed was next to. Now I have to have my feet uncovered and a fan on just to feel comfortable and tucked in sheets feel like I'm trapped.
Being human, eh?
Yeah exactly, I'll pull it out the moment I enter the bed. Also, I'd rather let the bed "breathe" while I'm not there. I tend to flip the sheets and lay them all the way over the "freet end" or the side of the bed, so both the sheets and the bed/mattress itself get some fresh air
I have such a hard time with this. I just can't get myself to be ok with repeating the same shit over and over just to have a kinda normal life.
I know this is partially because of my anxiety, which makes my body be in an almost constant state of "this is the last day so nothing matters other than survival" or "this is the last day so consume and spend everything you have as tomorrow won't exist", but it's also something I just don't like.
I can't stand the repetition and no matter how hard I try to keep a "normal" life with cleaning my apartment, keeping a good sleep schedule, saving for stuff, have any sort of long term feeling for anything it just doesn't click.
I've always been in survival mode and even after close to 20 years of long term sick leave and doing my best all that time to get away from that it has never even come close to happening.
You could also take away the opposite lesson, that society asks people to prioritize meaningless things, so there's no reason to follow such a vapid worldview.
Fun fact: it is scientifically proven that messy beds, thanks to more exposure to UV light and better distribution of that exposure per various points of surface, have lower populations of harmful microorganisms and are better for your health.
Entropy, it ain't what it used to be
"Exactly, there's so much shit you have to do over and over in life, why add unnecessary things to it??"
"How you do anything is how you do everything."
or
"Life in every breath."
A nod to my parents on this one: up until age 12 or so, it was just mattress, fitted sheet, and sleeping bag.
Mom even sewed little straps to the non-zipper side of the sleeping bag, which secured to the bedframe: kept my dumb ass from rolling out of bed without needing to screw around with rails.
Make the bed? Just pull the corner on the foot and head opposite the straps. 2 seconds, perfectly flat.
Eventually I switched to normal sheets and such cuz in my brain, sleeping bags were for kids!! ...aka, the parents tricked me into wanting to make the bed cuz I'm a big boi, see?!
Well played mom and dad. 10/10
Good attempt at a lesson, terrible actual chain of logic.
The attempted lesson here is presumably that things require regular maintenance and attention, in order to keep working well, working as they have been.
So... 'wash your bedding once a month, or after a spill or accident'... or ... 'clean your room once a week, so that it doesn't get so messy that you lose things or trip over stuff' ... or ... 'try your best to clean up dishes and cookware and put them away soon after you use them, so that the next time you need to use them, you can usually just assume they will be usable'.
A made bed?
I mean yeah, it can be useful as a simple routine for the sake of establishing any routine, or as regular mild excercise.
But an actual bed that is unmade... being not tidy does not make it more liable to degrading over time, unless shit is literally strewn across the room.
Or... unless you have some kind of very particular linens of something, where being crumpled will ruin their structural integrity...?
I'm trying to be generous here, but I think this is just an aesthetic preference masquerading as somehow ... actually functional.
Keeping your sheets and blankets clean, yeah that's functional.
Keeping them super tidy?
OCD pretending to not be OCD.
wash your bedding once a month, or after a spill or accident
for the love of god don't tell me you only wash your bedding once a month 🤢
Heh, yeah.
Asshole who never makes his bed here.
There's no value for the bed or room, but I see potential value for the person. I've got to admit, my friends who generally have their shit together are also the ones who make their bed.
Not that the bed making is some magic key, but they train themselves to treat all things as important and keep it together as they go.
As they walk by the room through the day, they get to see a well made bed and feel a bit better about the state of their affairs generally, thinking better of themselves and expecting more of themselves.
Idk, obviously I'm not living this way.
It's a lot of thought to put into a bed, but this is a comment section, a good place to get unnecessarily philosophical.
Or perhaps it's wonderful news about literally every aspect of life, in a nihilist way. Why try in any aspect of life if it will eventually get messed up again and your efforts will definitely be in vain? There is peace in surrendering to the inevitable chaos.
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