DESIGNER BEDSHEETS & THE RETRO LOOK

When I needed to replace the mattress on my bed some years ago I splurged and bought one of those big thick mattresses with a puffy top. It was to be my dream bed: comfortable and fit for a queen. It also needed to be fit for a person whose back problems required a lot of tossing and turning in the night, which meant fitted sheets.

At first, I had a hard time finding sheets the right size. The sheet industry had not kept up with the mattress industry, and for a while I ended up using funny little elastic “suspenders” which, if applied correctly to the corners of a flat sheet, would keep the bottom sheet in place. Later “pocket sheets” came into being. Even so, I had to measure the depth of my mattress and make sure that the fitted sheets I bought were that deep. It was a big pain in the patoot.

Finally the mattresses were made even deeper and the sheet makers had to make sheets with REALLY deep pockets. All other sized sheets disappeared. Presently, and probably for the rest of my life, I will be sleeping on a bed in which all the excess yardage of the too-deep-pocketed sheets gathers in the center directly underneath my sleeping body. See picture above. It is not good. I have considered getting out my trusty old sewing machine and making my own fitted sheets, but I guess I just don’t want them that badly. Like with many other things in my life, I just grumble and make do.

I saw online this morning an article called “Bedmaking (and Faking) 101” and I read it, thinking maybe something would be in it that might give me an alternative to my bunched-up sheet. The first thing I found is to be modern I should have a duvet on my bed instead of a bedspread. Well, I’m not going to do that. But I read on...oh, the next paragraph says I might want to ditch my duvet for a quilted coverlet, which doesn’t wrinkle. Next, it says “Pull a long one forward about 1/3 of the way, stack pillows so they hit the crease of the coverlet, and then pull coverlet over to hide the pillows for a very retro, 1950s style, that designers say is making a comeback.”

This made me laugh. On my bed I presently use a chenille bedspread and I do pull it up so it covers the pillows, just like my mother taught me to do when I was a little girl. Believe me, that predated the 1950s. The article went on to mention “ironing sheets” at which point I clicked on the red “X” in the upper right hand corner of my screen and left the bed designers to their own ruminations.

So what I got out of this little foray into the internet world this morning is that I am a “retro” woman. I already had this pretty much figured out, because I do find that I am teetering on the edge of being “superfluous.” I do not carry around a laptop computer, or an IPod or an IPad. I still write letters and have a land-line phone. I read from a book, not a Kindle. I give genealogy talks using transparencies, not Power Point. I watch movies at the theater and on my TV, but not on my computer. I eat on real plates, not paper plates. And so on.

I really prefer being thought of as Retro rather than superfluous, so I’ll change my thinking along those lines. Retro will always be in. And that’s where you’ll find me, and I'm just fine with that.

But I still can’t figure out what to do with my bunched-up sheets!