There’s Only One Good Universal Reason To Make Your Bed Every Day

Is making your bed every morning pointless?

What’s the psychology behind making your bed every morning?

Besides sometimes seeming pointless, not making your bed in the morning seems like a no-brain way to save a little time every day. 

Editing those odd moments out can add up until they amount to a lot of time saved over the years of your life.

Depending on your situation, there could be other reasons to skip pulling the sheets snug and covering them with a comforter upon waking.

• You feel like you’ve got more important things to do.
• You don’t feel like it sets a tone for the whole day.
• You want to “air the sheets out.” 
• You don’t have pets who will get on your bed and shed.
• You don’t care about what people think about you if you suddenly die and “they” see you have an unmade bed.
• You don’t even use a bed, but you do fold up whatever it is you sleep on.

These reasons were all submitted as answers to a question someone on Twitter asked whether others made up their bed every morning.

Are these reasons valid? People believe they are. The DRS remains a judgment-free zone when it comes to whether it’s better to make up your bed or not. We’re more concerned with the psychology behind making your bed.

Reasons to make up your bed

Making up your bed will help to keep it free of crumbs, fur, and insects. Bedcovers supply a sort of defense to your sheets.

Of course, if you sleep with shedding dogs, maybe you’re not worried about that.

Then there’s the whole texture reason for making up your bed. Some people move a whole lot when they’re sleeping. Some move a lot when they’re not. Those sheets on the plastic mattress will only stay in place for so long before they’re wadded up and off to the side. 

This would bug me. I much prefer the feeling of cotton sheets to plastic any day, any time. However, after years of working in emergency departments and seeing dozens of people sleep, I know that this is far from universal among people for various reasons. Having a plastic texture to your mattress makes absolutely no difference to a significant percentage of the population.

Your home isn’t a hotel. A hotel is a business. Having the display of a bed with tightly pulled sheets is part of the service. If the hotel presented you with wadded-up sheets, you’d think they’d be used by someone else, and that would be less valuable to you. Making up the bed for you makes sense for the hotel because you’re willing to pay them for the service. If it weren’t, some efficiency-minded expert would edit it out of your hotel experience.

The one big reason to make your bed

There is only one compelling reason to make up your bed.

Evidence suggests you’ll be happier if you do so.

People are happier when they’re organized. 

Better organization = more happiness. 

Maybe that’s not always true. Maybe there’s no way to really quantify it, but maybe it’s true enough.

At least one survey suggests this, so there’s that but think about it. If you make your bed, it’s like getting set for the day. That doesn’t mean you can’t be happy if you don’t make your bed but it does seem that’s one more thing stacked against happiness if you don’t.

For further reading:

Make Your Bed (famous speech by Admiral William McRaven)

How to make a bed

Opinion: 5 Reasons to Make Your Bed Every Day

Find and keep a great morning routine.

 

James Cobb RN, MSN, is an emergency department nurse and the founder of the Dream Recovery System. His goal is to provide his readers with simple, actionable ways to improve their health and maximize their quality of life. 

 

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