Episode: 1368
Title: HPR1368: How to Fold a Fitted Sheet
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1368/hpr1368.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:20:31

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Okay, everybody, this is John Culpin, Lafayette, Louisiana, and I've been threatening to
do this for a while on social media and on the email list on HPR, and that is to record
an episode about how to fold a fitted sheet.
This is something that I'm pretty sure my mom tried to teach me when I was growing up,
that either I wasn't paying attention at the crucial moment or something, and that
must be it, because my mom could do it.
She could fold a fitted sheet that looked like it was a flat sheet when it was all folded
up, and this was something that always struck me as dark magic or something.
And I didn't try to do it again really until a few years ago, I mean, all the intervening
years, I just would basically wad it up and jam it in the cabinet and not worry about
it. But once when we were staying up at my in-laws house in New York, and they gave us the
sheets to put on the hide-a-bed from the sofa, the sheets were all stacked in a little pile there,
and when I unfolded one of them, I was astonished to find that it was a fitted sheet,
because it was so perfectly flat when it was all folded up, and I asked my sister-in-law,
how did you do that? And she says, oh, I didn't do that. I don't know how to fold a fitted
sheet. It was our housekeeper who did that. And at that moment, I thought, you know,
if a housekeeper can do this, then surely I, who have a PhD, can learn how to do this.
And so I looked up a video on YouTube, and there's this guy on there that showed you how to do it,
and watching the video and cut a couple of times and trying it out a couple of times,
I finally, it dawned on me what you had to do to make it work. Now, I warn you,
this is something, if you actually learn how to do this, then you risk becoming the sheet folder
in your house for basically the rest of your life. This has definitely happened to me.
Once I showed that I was competent at folding sheets, my wife said, well, you're so good at it,
that I think that's your job from now on. And that's fine, really. I mean, I like, she does so much
around the house that I don't mind having this thing to do to help out, but it's just fair warning.
If you learn how to do this, then you're going to be the sheet folder from now on. Also,
sometimes she'll gripe at me because it's so flat that she can't tell which sheet is which,
and she, thinking she's pulled out the flat one, she'll unfold it only to find that it is the
fitted one, and then she has to kind of water it up and jam it back in there, because she doesn't know
how to do this. So, let's get started. This is going to be a bit of a challenge to do in an
audio podcast on account of, it's something that you really need to see, but I think I can explain it,
and walk you through the process well enough that you can do it. So, first of all, you need a fitted
sheet, and you want to lay it down on something pretty big like a bed, and you want to do it so that
the sleeping side of the sheet is facing down. So, the part that you would sleep on is facing down,
and the part that would be touching the mattress is facing up, so that if the, if the part with
the elastic could like stand itself straight up, you would be looking at a very large tub or
something. So, get it laying down there, and what you have to do is essentially fold it in half
first. Now, this is hard to do because the temptation is simply to fold it over and try to fold
the corners together in such a way that they all just kind of bunch up. It's hard to explain
exactly what you want to do here, but think about when you fold a sheet of paper over. Let's see,
you've got a sheet of paper that's printed on one side and blank on the other side, and put it
down on the desk with the printed side up. What happens when you fold it over in half? Well,
the printed side is all on the inside, right? And then the non-printed side is still all on the
outside, and you essentially have to accomplish the same thing with this sheet. Now, the way to do that
is now that you've got your sheet lying on the bed, lying, you lay something down, you lie on
something. So, you have laid the sheet down on the bed with the inside part facing up, and the part
that you would sleep on is on the underneath. So, and I would suggest doing it lengthwise so that
you've got the short end of the sheet on the right and on the left. If you've got a king-size
sheet, it doesn't really matter. They're practically square, but the first thing to do is to find the
corner, like the very corner where the seam is that makes kind of the edge of a cube right there,
if you were to put it all out there, like where the corner the mattress pokes, and you want to take
your middle finger on, put your middle finger on the sleeping side of the sheet right on that corner,
and kind of shove it under so that you're holding it out in front of you with the mattress side
of the sheet facing you. It's like you're wearing a little mitten from the sheet and your middle
fingers right up in the very corner of the sheet. Now, you want to take that and put it inside the
mattress side of the sheet on the same end and match up those two corners so that your middle
finger is now poking straight into the corner of both sides of the sheet. Okay? So, you've got the
inside of the sheet facing the inside of the sheet, and then there's this part over here that's
just kind of hanging down over there, and you have to do the same thing on the other end. It's a
little bit of a challenge where you can actually kind of lay it down. Now that you've got that
done, I'm going to lay that part down right there. The corners are matched up and it is done in such a
way that the inside of one corner is facing the inside of the other corner, and you can put your
finger right up in that little corner there. Okay, so now I'm going to go do the same thing on the
other end. Start from the outside part of the sheet, the part that faces outward to the world,
and put your finger on the right on that little corner and kind of poke it under so that it
looks like you've got your little sheet mitten there, and the inside part of the sheet is facing you,
and then move it upward toward the other corner on this end of the sheet and stick it right inside.
Again, you're still on your fingers poking on the inside of the other corner there. So on one,
that's hard to explain without pictures, so you put your hand first on the outside part of the
sheet right up in the corner, and then you move that corner up into the inside corner on the other
side, and then so I'm going to lay that down, just kind of fluff it out a little bit so there aren't
any bunched up bits. So you have on each end the corners are matched up. Now here's the magic bit,
that makes it all work. On each end you have to put like your right arm right back in that corner
on the inside and your left arm in the corner on the other end of the sheet, and then hold it out,
stand up and hold it out one hand to either side. My hands are pretty far apart right now,
they're about five or six feet apart, and then you have to bring your two middle fingers that are
jammed up in those corners together so that your fingers are poking together right in the middle,
they're touching, and then take your left arm and flip the whole side of, you might even
make this easier, put your middle fingers together so that those two corners, all four corners right
now should be touching, and take your right hand and kind of pinch that other sheet so that it
doesn't slip, and then take your left arm and flip the whole thing over, and then with all four
corners under one arm just kind of shake it out and get the bunches loose there, and you should have
something that has now been folded over twice, and it'll lay it on the bed, and maybe I should
take pictures of the various stages here, but at this point it has been folded lengthwise and then
the other way, and you have to do a little bit of kind of manual flattening out here, and you've
essentially got a small rectangle now, at this point, it should be pretty flat, flatten out as
much as you can here, and then you just fold it normally, I've taken folded about to one third of
the length, and then take the other third and fold it over, so now I've got a sheet that is about
one foot wide and two and a half feet long, then I'll do a short fold here and another fold over,
and now I have a tidy little folded sheet, a fitted sheet that's folded all up, and it is almost
perfectly flat, and so it's very easy to store, and it's ready to go, so what do you think, can you do
it? I think I'll maybe try to post a couple of pictures, or get my wife to take pictures of me doing
so that you can see the various processes, or you could actually watch a video on YouTube like I did,
but I'd be curious to see if anyone can actually learn how to do this just by listening to me.
I've got another one here, I'm going to go ahead and walk you through that one as well, a little bit
quicker this time, so I lay the sheet out with the sleeping side down, and the mattress side up,
kind of get all the corners undone there. This sheet looks like it's got some holes in it, it might
be retired very soon. Okay, so this sheet actually has much more springy elastic than the other one,
it's going to be a little harder. Some of these sheets are easier to do than others.
This one's elastic is pretty springy, so it's going to be a little more of a challenge, but the
principle is the same. So now I've got the sheet with the mattress side of the sheet facing me,
and the sleeping side is down. I'm going to start on the right hand side and take my middle finger
on the sleeping side of the sheet, put it in that corner, kind of push it through up under the
other corner on the same end of the sheet, so that my middle finger is stuck right in the corner
on both parts there. I'm going to lay that down, move to the other end, take the middle finger,
find the corner, push it under there, and then push it under this other corner on the inside part
of the sheet there, transfer that corner to my left hand, go back over here to the right side,
and pick up the whole sheet with the right hand holding the right side left holding my arms
are spread out wide, going to bring them together, and touch the middle fingers together, and then
kind of pinch the sheet, flip it over, shake it out a little bit, and lay it down.
And I've got my rectangle, and fold it a third of the way, fold the other side over a third,
and then fold it the rest of the way, done. All right, y'all, that's about the best I can do
over pure audio, so hope you enjoyed that, and I'd be curious to see on feedback whether you can
actually learn how to do it from my little audio demonstration there. Spin John Culp for Hacker Public
Radio, talk to you later.
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