yard work, making the bed

[abka]

I did yard work today. Cleaned out the gutters and in the process learned that our ladder is not tall enough to access all of the gutters on the front of the house. So I climbed on the roof from the back and cleaned them out that way. Felt stupid (also kind of scared of heights, and no net here) but the gutters are clean(er). Also raked the front yard. Left the (larger) backyard for D.

Did a bunch of even less exciting housework. So a poll:

Poll #1665 Making the Bed

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

View Respondents

Making the bed is

View Answers

a sign of respect for myself and my house, I do it almost daily
3 (17.6%)

nice when it's done, like in a hotel, or maybe when I change the sheets
7 (41.2%)

a gesture of love, from mom, or a partner, something I do/has been done for me to brighten the day
0 (0.0%)

something you do to get ready for company
5 (29.4%)

something you do to get ready for company who will spend significant time in the bedroom
8 (47.1%)

an arbitrary chore, why bother when I'm going to get back in the bed!
7 (41.2%)

something I imagine myself doing when I "have my shit together", it's pretty far down the list, so yeah, not going to happen
4 (23.5%)

not something I have a philosphy about
1 (5.9%)

something else I will detail in comments
4 (23.5%)

Also: is House doing a episode with fangirls and a Whedonesque character? Am loving the 80s dance scene.

Comments

[ellinor.livejournal.com]

...something I dislike doing so much, but desire to have done enough, that I tend to sleep on top of the covers :)

[ellen_fremedon]

...something I find annoying when it's done for me, since then I have to undo it before I can sleep. (I can't sleep if the edges of the bedclothes are tucked under the mattress. They have to be free all the way around, so I can mummify myself properly.)

[trixie]

Me too! The first thing I have to do in any hotel is pull the damn sheets and stuff out from under the mattress.

[treewishes]

In my systems, its not so much "making the bed" as "straightening the duvet". I mean, there's no top sheet, and the pillows don't move much, so making the bed takes about 10 seconds.

Of course, this means you have to take off the duvet cover and wash it every week or two, but I make R put it back on :)

[fox]

I do make the bed each morning, but it's not that I have a philosophy about it so much as that I have a marked preference for sleeping in an ordered bed than a disordered one. If it's already in disarray, the odds that the bedclothes will come away and leave, like, my right foot uncovered (which will then be cold and wake me up) are increased, whereas if the bed is made up relatively tightly, I can get in it and be under the covers because I know where the covers are. And I lie fairly still when I sleep, is the other thing, so the bedding is very little disturbed -- this might well be different if I slept violently or in company or both, but most mornings "making the bed" is a matter of flipping the corner of the covers at the top of the bed on the side I sleep in back up where it goes. I don't make it up tight-tight every morning the way I do when I'm putting new sheets on on laundry day.

[gnomad]

...is something I do because it's one of the few household chores I can do in under a minute and in doing so make the whole bedroom look good. Most household chores take far more effort to make a comparable impact on the look of the room.