You’ve made your bed, now lie in it

In making the bed, she [the Lady’s maid] will study her lady’s wishes, whether it is to be hard or soft, sloping or straight, and see that it is done accordingly.

Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management, 1861
Chapter XLI.
Domestic Servants.
Accessed via: etext.library.adelaide.edu.au

When I first started boarding school back in the early 1980s, our list of requirements included “two blankets”. With these two blankets we were expected to make a neat bed each morning. The blankets were to be tucked in tightly together with the starched and wrinkle-free school-supplied white sheets (flat only, no fitted). The top sheet was to be folded back over the blankets and the whole thing topped off with a regulation blue and white heavy cotton quilt.

Before we left the boarding house for school each day we had to fold each of the sides of the quilt up onto the bed so that the cleaners could easily vacuum under the beds. They then pulled the sides down as they finished each dormitory. When we returned from school in the afternoon, we were expected to fold the quilt into a small square and put it on the top of our wardrobes, ready for the next morning.

Given no-one was actually allowed into the boarding house during the day, I could never quite see the point of all this quilt routine! However, it did instill in me a respect for the ritual of making a bed each morning and making it well.

At some point during my boarding school years, doonas (duvets, continental quilts, comforters) hit Australia. Suddenly there was a bedding option which didn’t require neat tucking in. You could simply pull up and smooth out…voila, a made bed! There was much debate among the boarding house powers-that-be about whether girls would be permitted to have doonas instead of blankets. Eventually the doonas were given the green light – provided they were tucked in all the way around and smoothed out to mimic the appearance of a blanket-made bed.

From that point on, the making of dormitory beds was never the same. By the time I left school, doonas were the rule rather than the exception, and due to a problem in supply of replacements for worn out ones, the quilts (and their associated folding rituals) were also abandoned.

Now I wish I could instill in my daughters that same respect for a neatly made bed. Although they both have doonas on their beds, they have sheets underneath and, call me old-fashioned, I like a neatly-tucked sheet rather than a hastily hidden mess of scrunched up linen.

There is only one way to achieve the neatness of tuck required and that is with the old-style hospital corner.

The practice of creating tight, origami-type folds of the bedding dates back to when hospital beds did not have safety rails. A firmly made bed could keep a drugged or injured patient in place, preventing any accidental rolls out of bed. Nurses through the ages have prided themselves on their ability to fold hospital corners, and those in the military forces aim for the legendary 'coin-bounce" degree of neatness in making their beds.

I tried to teach my five year old daughter the art of hospital corners in a step by step tutorial, but perhaps I was a little ambitious?

Step 1: smooth top sheet over the bed, tuck the foot of the sheet in.

Step 2: Holding the bottom edge of the sheet, pull it onto the bed to form a triangle.

Step 3: Tuck the remaining side of the sheet under the mattress

Step 4: Pull the triangle back across the side of the mattress

Step 5: Tuck the remaining sheet into the edge of the bed, creating a neat diagonal fold on the corner.

Step 6: Replace doona over top of sheet.

Step 7: Wonder why exactly you carried out steps 1-5, given that step 6 hides all previous handiwork.


Do you hospital corner your beds?