Sometimes I wonder why we buy our children beds. They would much prefer to sleep on the floor. Every weekend, they carry their pillows and blankets into one bedroom, and crash on the floor for a sleepover. In addition, the question invariably comes up at least three or four nights during the school week, “Can we have a sleepover tonight?” Time and time again, Iron Man or I say, “No, it’s a school night. You can only have sleepovers on Fridays and Saturdays.” To which a child responds, “Oh… yeah. I forgot.”

But being that most nights are school nights, we have seven beds that are used almost nightly. That’s a lot of bedding, a lot of laundry, and a lot of making beds. Because of this, I subscribe to the “keep it simple” philosophy when it comes to sheets and bedding.

Here are my bedding tips in a nutshell:

• Ask yourself how many sheet sets and blankets you really need. We basically use only one bedding set per bed. When I wash bedding, I just put it right back on the bed after it comes out of the dryer. This not only saves storage space, but it saves time in having to fold sheets!
• For storage, we have one or two spare sets of sheets in each size, a few plain blankets that are put under our regular blankets in the winter, a few extra pillows and blankets for guests, and a long pillow that I only use during pregnancy. All of this is in a cedar chest in Iron Man’s and my bedroom.
• Our few extra sheet sets are kept folded and tucked inside the accompanying pillow case. This allows the sheets to stay nicely folded even if they get tossed around, such as when piling up on a high closet shelf.
• If your storage space is limited, extra sheet sets can be kept between the mattress and box spring of the beds they are used for.
• Making beds can be cumbersome for children with bunkbeds. We lay the blankets down in such a way that the outside edge of the mattress is covered only by the fitted sheet. The topsheet and blanket do not hang over that side; the topsheet edge comes just to the mattress’ top edge. To make their beds, all the children need to do is pull the sheet and blanket up, smooth it out, and throw their pillow on top.
• While in their beds, the kids don’t pull the blanket out from against the wall. This is not something I’ve taught them; they discovered for themselves that it’s much easier to make their beds when they don’t have to tuck in the bedding between the mattress and the wall.