At Cobb Manor, housekeeping has been characterized as, well, casual. I like to think of it as “comfortable.”
Some have derided it as “sloth.” Others with unchristian attitudes have charged that the program is that of the “mentally unstable.” Quite hurtful, I would say.
When it comes to making the bed, I take a seasonal approach. There is no reason that I have found to make the bed every time you get out of it. It’s not like you are not coming back in a few hours. One approach was to make the bed carefully, then place an L.L. Bean sleeping bag on top.
There is nothing warmer than a 20-degree bag indoors. Your toes warm up instantly. True, there is not a lot of room to roll around but that is a small price to pay for cozy warmth. In the morning, you roll out of the sleeping bag and, presto, your bed is still made up, in case of second-floor inspections.
There are those, probably your mother included, who asked as soon as you got down the stairs “Did you make your bed?”
I hate to say it. Your mother and the housekeeping Nazis (you know who you are) are wrong. Leave that bed as it is. The reason is tiny. The reason is those creepy little dust mites.
You will not believe it, but the average bed (yours included) contains up to 1.5 million of these creatures. You don’t want to think about it, but they feed on human skin scales. You don’t want to think about it, but they produce allergens, which are actually mite poop, which are (gulp) easily inhaled. They wreak havoc with asthma and other allergies.
No, you can’t hold your breath that long.
While you are dreaming, tossing, turning and sweating, those dust mites are having a holiday picnic on your droppings. If you rise and dutifully make that bed and make hospital corners with those sheets, you are trapping these disgusting creatures in your bed. On the other (lazy) hand, if you leave your bed in that delightful mess, the mites will be exposed to sunlight and air.
That is a bad thing for mites. Don’t listen to me. Listen to my new friend, Dr. Stephen Pretlove, the dean of dust mites.
“We know that mites can only survive by taking in water from the atmosphere using small glands on the outside of their body,” Dr. Pretlove of London’s Kingston University School of Architecture told the BBC. “Something as simple as leaving a bed unmade during the day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress so the mites will dehydrate and eventually die.”
Kill!
Dr. Pretlove has a background in construction engineering, architecture and environmental studies. His academic interests include sustainable and environmental architectural design, with a particular emphasis on energy and carbon emissions, and the health impacts of indoor environments. His research work concentrates on understanding the dynamics between the indoor environment and moisture performance of a building, and the effect that these environments have on the development of micro-organisms, such as mites and molds.
So there.
Mite experts (there are such people) recommend leaving your bed unmade for the entire day, despite what your mother told you, then making it (if you must) when you get home later. By that point, many of the mites will have died an unceremonious death.
Or, you could use the “Cobb Manor Method” by making that bed and sleeping in that Bean bag for the rest of the winter.
I wonder how many mites are living in that bag. Probably 2 million. But the bed is just fine.
I wonder if Dr. Pretlove has any advice on abandoning the vacuuming of rugs.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the BDN in Rockland for 30 years.