The Argument Against Making Your Bed

The alarm on your phone rings, and you reach over to hit snooze. Just a few more minutes, you tell yourself, allowing yourself to fall right back to sleep. It's Monday morning, and you don't really want to exist in the world just yet. It's okay, we all do it.

Then it's time to get up, get dressed. You brush your teeth, comb your hair, and maybe put on a little bit of makeup. Pretty soon you're eating breakfast, about to head out the door.

That's when you look at your bed.

The covers are thrown all around, theres a pillow on the floor, and if you had sheets at one point, they're nowhere in sight. For a mere moment, you think about making your bed. But imagine this: you don't have to make it. You can go to work, or school, or wherever, then come home to a bed all ready to just hop into. No moving the sheets into a position you like, no adjusting the pillow to just the right height for your head. You can just pop in and fall asleep.

I know what you're probably thinking. "But a made bed looks nice." "It doesn't take that long to make your bed every morning." "But what if someone sees my unmade bed?"

But just stop thinking for a second. How much of that stuff really matters? And not just matters because you've been taught so, but how much of it has real substance. At the end of the day, is it really going to make a difference if your bed looks "nice?" Will your attitude be magically improved by spending the extra five minutes each morning to fix it? And, in my opinion, the people you bring into your room shouldn't be the same people who would judge your bed-making skills. So, in the end, why make it?

You see, we've been taught since we were little that making our bed was important, and if we didn't we'd be punished. I'm pretty sure the first chore we're given as children after "pick up your toys" is "make your bed." Clearly, it was an important concept for our parents to teach us. So some of us tried our best, some of us ignored the warnings, but most of us complained. Our biggest childish argument was that we would be returning to our beds that very night, so why make it?

And coming from the mouth of a child, this argument seemed pretty silly. But what about adults? Doesn't that very argument still hold true? I mean, how many of us truly want to make our beds every morning, only to mess them up again that very same day?

It's an interesting question, and one we all must take a moment to think about, throwing away the "rules" of society. There are so many arbitrary things we are told to be "right," yet they truly don't matter. Could making our beds be one of those things? The best way to find out is to try.

So, for the next week, I will be making my bed every morning, and I mean every morning. We'll see how much my life changes, and if it changes at all. The way I see it, there are two possible outcomes: my life changes for the better, and I am enlightened by the bed-making process, or I somehow prove that making your bed isn't all it's cracked up to be. Only time will tell.