#@*%& Fitted Sheets!
Me, doing the easy part of making our Airbnb cottage bed …
There’s a couple things in life I truly love ~ the scent of freshly baking bread, the first cool crisp day in the Fall, a bed freshly made with high thread count cotton sheets, and all the amazing things Martha Stewart dangles before us in the various ways she does. You see, Martha, in all her perfection and imperfection, makes me feel like I just might be able to have a gloriously decorated home, perfectly tidy, with every towel, buttery soft throw, and sheet folded to perfection. This is where Martha and I diverge.
Being an Airbnb Superhost for five years running, I take the aesthetics of pretty much everything into account. Clean, tidy, and organized - in my opinion, these communicate something about the overall level of cleanliness and quality of my Airbnb Plus listing!
You see, I can fold the heck out of towels, ensuring each is folded in exactly the same way, corners matched, and rumple-free such that the stack looks like a display from Pottery Barn. I can also fold the heck out of throws ~ thin throws, thick puffy throws, Alpaca fiber throws, and even slippery silky throws ~ they ALL look home and garden magazine perfect. When it comes to fitted sheets though, I just can’t fold them. Not even a little bit. No matter how hard I try or how many times I’ve watched ‘how to fold a fitted sheet’ videos (and I’ve watched many) including one by my dear frenemy, Martha Stewart’s, I. Just. Can’t. Blast! (Screw you, Martha, for making me feel incompetent! :-)
I’ve tried a variety of methods too ~ standing with the fitted sheet dangling and tangling from my unskilled hands, getting help from a patient and unsuspecting friend, and even laying the fitted sheet on a flat surface - at this point the fitted sheet looks up at me, openly mocking my ineptitude. With humility, I’m good and even great at a lot of things, but none of my skills are equal to the challenge of a fitted sheet. It all ends with what resembles a ball of a sheet, crumpled in great contrast to it’s neatly folded flat-sheet-sister, and me a sweaty exasperated mess.
So, to our Your Alpaca Cottage guests, I apologize in advance for any sloppily folded fitted sheets you may encounter in the oh-so-neat-and-tidy storage bins in the Cottage closet. They are impeccably clean, I promise, but will never, EVERY be folded as neatly as they were when they were first purchased. (Hmmm..there’s a potential plan – just buy NEW sheets! #unsustainable)
All of this to say ~ Martha, if I didn’t adore you so much, I’d truly have to dislike you….