Once upon a time, when I was 13 years old, my dad and I moved to Baton Rouge to help my Mawmaw Mary Ada take care of my Pawpaw “Pie” Theriot. Pawpaw was wheelchair-bound from a stroke years earlier, so Mawmaw had to do everything for him. For a slight woman, cooking, cleaning, and pushing around 150-odd pounds of man in a wheelchair had become too much. So my dad and I packed up our LaPlace home and moved into what I call “Theriot Town,” a plot of land teeming with Theriots. We lived in a double-wide trailer “down the hill” from our family’s hardware store, which was situated on the Highland Ridge a.k.a. “up the hill.” My dad and his bros transformed our trailer into a little slice of Cajun heaven, attaching to it a swanky deck which surrounded an above-ground pool. My aunt, uncle, and about six cousins, who lived in their respective trailers, were the other residents of our little microcosm.
My staunchly Catholic Mawmaw was neither warm nor fuzzy, especially to her grandkids. Most of her compliments were backhanded: “That’s nice. Loose girls wear things like that, but it’s nice.” She became especially ornery when we lived together, so a morsel of kindness from her hit like a decadent meal. We got along really well for the hour a week that we shared laughs while watching Saturday Night Live (she especially enjoyed the Dana Carvey Church Lady sketch), and we had a blast together the time that I let her pick out a wardrobe for me that looked exactly like hers, culottes and all. After living in the double-wide for a few months, Mawmaw told me that I had to start helping out around the house. My two weekly duties were to strip and remake the beds and clean the bathrooms. Because of her excellent tutelage, my pathological need to please people, and a heaping spoonful of obsessive-compulsive disorder, I am a bathroom cleaning beast and still make beds fit for Homes and Gardens magazine.
Making a Bed the Mary Ada Way
You’ll want to use wrinkle-free sheets. Fewer wrinkles make it easier to create clean tucks and folds for un résultat magnifique! I fold my sheets right out of the dryer to prevent rumply bedding. Place the fitted sheet onto the mattress making sure to completely tuck all sides of it under the mattress. Pulling it taut when tucking at the corners will help to prevent puckering. In order to shake free any remaining wrinkles and to add a little dramatic panache to this otherwise mundane activity, snap the top sheet into the air (as you did with the parachute whilst playing that parachute tag game in kindergarten) and watch it float down onto the bed. Straighten the top sheet, making sure that the top edge/hem/marrow stitch is flush with the edge of the head of the mattress. The top sheet should not hang over the edge of the mattress that’s near the headboard. Make sure that the sides of the sheet are symmetrical on the left and right sides of the mattress. You know the old saying, if your sheet hangs lower on the left or right, your bed ain’t gonna look hella tight. At the foot of the bed, tautly tuck the sheet under the mattress, making sure it’s not crumpled. If it’s not perfectly flat and even between your mattress and box spring, you won’t be able to create (drumroll please) the clean, crisp, rectangular folds of your HOSPITAL (MILITARY) CORNERS! Some people prefer to leave the top sheet untucked, and those people are uncouth and lazy, and most importantly, are missing out on the warmth and coziness of snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug, sheet-secured feet. With the sheet tucked in the aforementioned manner, you will see the untucked portion of it hanging at the corner of the bed. Stand or kneel at the corner of the bed, place your pointer finger on the top corner of the mattress, and pinch the sheet there. Use your other hand to grab the edge of the untucked part of the sheet, pull it toward yourself, and lift it so it is level with the pinched area of the sheet. The sheet below the straight line that you’ve created will hang loose. Now move this straight line of sheet toward the head of the bed, until it’s flush with and parallel to the side of the bed. You have now created an obtuse-ish triangle between the pinched corner of the sheet and the edge that is parallel to the top of the mattress. Finally, while holding the sheet against the side of the bed, tuck your newly-created sheet triangle in between the mattress and box spring. The result is a triangular hospital corner. I prefer a 90 degree military corner, so I pull some of the sheet that forms the hypotenuse of the triangle out from under the mattress to create more of a square shape. Let the rest of the top sheet hang down gracefully along the edge of the bed. You feel fauncy now, don’t lie.
Now for the comforter or blanket. Lay it over the top sheet, making sure that the top edge of the comforter is even with the top edge of the sheet. Don’t forget, equal fabric length on the left and right sides of the bed! You can either tuck the blanket in at the foot of the bed and hospital corner ‘er or you can leave ‘er hangin’, depending on if you like a drapey or high-and-tight look. Now back to the head of the bed. In order to make the bed look inviting, I always fold the blanket and sheet back. Pull the blanket back about 12” and then pull the sheet over the blanket, lining up the crease of the fold with that of the blanket. After the sheet and blanket are folded back, you’ll notice that you can see the underside of both. If there is a pattern on the top side of the fabric, it’s not visually appealing, in my opinion, to see the underside of it. To right this wrong, I first make a crease in the middle of the folded-back sheet and lift the front side of the fabric up and over, until the top edge of the sheet is flush with the crease that you’ve created. Now I fold the blanket up and over the sheet crease, so that the top side of it is flush with the top edge of the sheet. Look at that, you neat person—you’ve created a sweet little double-folded sheet and blanket cuff! It’s time to stuff your comfy pillow into its case, and place it, pillow seam facing the headboard, in between the double-folded cuff and the headboard. Top off this dreamy Doberge with the cherry that is one or two accent pillows, or, if you are a perpetual child like me, a stuffed animal or 10. Stand back and take a gander at the comfortable art you’ve made. And remember, Mary Ada would be proud of you!
Got cleaning questions? Email isabel@antigravitymagazine.com
illustrations by Ben Claassen III
