Mama taught all of us girls the basics of laundry. We learned how to use the washing machine, the proper way to hang clothes on the line, and when we were blessed with an automatic dryer, how to use it. Once everything was cleaned, she taught us how to iron, then fold items and put them away. And yes, she even taught us how to fold fitted sheets.
Fitted sheets are the bane of our existence. No matter how hard we try, they just don’t fold well. Fold in half, tuck the fitted corners together, fold again. Tuck in the flap. It looked easy. It sounded easy when Mama explained. After quite a bit of trial and error, I managed. And then, the manufacturers came out with elastic corners. I went back to Folding Fitted Sheets 101 all over again.
Several years ago, I saw a website that exclaimed there was no real reason to even go through the effort. Don’t Fold Them! Don’t Stress Yourself! It was a war cry. It seemed that women everywhere were tired of having to deal with the uneven, mussed look to a folded fitted sheet. So, why try? Here’s my answer:
Because you can. There are many things in life that leave us wrinkled and looking messy. But that just isn’t a good reason to skip doing it. Think about it. Housework can leave us frazzled. Yet we still clean our house because it just isn’t healthy to leave it dirty.
Mowing the grass and weeding the garden in the heat of summer can leave you hot, sweaty, dirty, and exhausted. But tall grass can be a good hiding place for critters and snakes. An overgrown and weed-filled garden just looks unkempt and prevents the herbs and vegetables we need to feed our families from producing.
And any job you do that takes extra effort is a great way to strengthen your skills and gives you a sense of pride. Some things take more time to learn how to do properly, but it just makes it so much more satisfying when you finally accomplish it.
The hassle of folding fitted sheets is really just a metaphor for the struggles we face in life. Our lives don’t always have even sides. Our fitted corners may be elasticized or not. And in the process of being ‘folded’, we may appear mussed, wrinkled, and wadded up. But the bottom line is that we are trying. We are trying to get our gardens to grow. We are trying to raise well-adjusted children. We are trying to be good wives. We are trying to balance work, home, church, family, and self. And keeping it all together is just as difficult some days as folding a fitted sheet.
Folding fitted sheets can be a challenge. But challenges are what help us to build resilience. That resilience in turn helps us to build confidence in our abilities. And with a strong self-confidence, we can learn to bounce back from hardships more quickly and easily, without a tremendous amount of emotional and physical damage.
It takes a lot of practice to fold a fitted sheet. But with practice comes ability. There is no way we can be faced with a new task and perfect it within seconds. Instead, we have to attempt it the first time. We study what went wrong and try again. The next time we do a little better but see another place that needs improvement. We throw our attempts back into the wash, hang them out to dry, iron them, then step back and view our progress. A small stain here, a wrinkle there. We can see our progress and try harder the next time.
With all that practice, we begin to grow as a person. We also learn more about who we really are, deep inside. Are we someone who gives up too easily? Giving up before you even really try can be harder than folding those fitted sheets. It can cause us to feel like a failure, teach us to resist change and may even cause us to begin fearing the future and any other challenges it may present.
We often give up too easily because we live in a society of instant gratification. We see others doing things quickly and with very little effort, so doesn’t it stand to reason we should be able to do the same thing? Not really. What you don’t see is those people probably spent hours, days, and possibly even years learning the art and technique of what they are doing. As much as I hate to say this, as it’s almost become cliché, but television programs have us resolving issues and solving crimes in 18 to 22 minutes (if it’s a 30-minute program); 44 minutes if it’s something like NCIS or 911. The rest of that half hour or hour is dedicated to trying to sell us something we don’t really need. In reality, detectives wish they could solve the crimes in less than an hour. And even if by some miracle they do, they still put in hours, days, and sometimes even years putting together all the evidence to make it play out in their favor in court.
But instant gratification can’t always be achieved. It takes practice, and with that practice, the difficult tasks becomes easier. The stains are gone. The iron didn’t scorch. And the elastic corners are smoothed down. The fitted sheet is folded neatly and tucked away in the linen closet. The struggles are behind us, and we are ready to move on to the next challenge.
And here’s a little something else about sheets that are clean and wrinkle-free. It makes for a better night’s sleep. You may laugh at me, but growing up, my Aunt Emily used to iron all of their sheets. To her, it was an important part of the weekly laundry routine. I always loved spending the night over there, as I knew I would probably sleep better than I did anywhere else.
Today, I don’t iron my sheets every single time. But if I have guests coming, I do. And when I’ve had a particularly rough week, I go ahead and iron the sheets for my bed. There is just something comforting and relaxing sleeping on sheets that have been freshly laundered, hung out on the line to dry, and then ironed. And better yet, I can smile as I feel the stress of the day roll off my shoulders in expectations of a good night’s sleep and some sweet dreams.
Whether it is folding sheets, a messy house or a life that is threatening to become so unbalanced we fall flat on our face, all of Life is a challenge. It is these challenges that make us who we are: Strong. Resilient. Determined. Confident. And it is through those struggles that we find joy, happiness, and contentment.
Do your fitted sheets still not fold right? Don’t worry. In reality, it doesn’t matter if your sheets are folded neatly. The real question is, can you back down that easily from the challenges of Life?
I still struggle with those blasted fitted sheets. But I will learn how, the same way I can learn to overcome any challenge Life throws at me.
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