Tips to Keep a Clean House: Make Your Bed!

Welcome to my new series, Tips to Keep a Clean House! This series is just what it says it is. I'll be offering you my tips on how I keep my house tidy, clean and "drop in" ready!


The fact here is, when your house is clean, don't you just feel better? I always think about that scene in the remake of The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman (it's back on Netflix btw). The part where she and Better Midler and their friend Roger walk into "Bobbie's" (Bette's) house, which is the biggest disaster I've ever seen, for the first time and Roger looks around and asks "Are you making Anthrax?" A clean home makes you feel better, makes your family feel better, makes any guests you have feel more welcome, and not like they just walked into a crime scene. I am HAPPIER when my house is spotless. My husband appreciates it and he is happier when everything is clean and in order.

I'm talking about a CLEAN house, not a tidy house. There are differences, and we will examine them later on in this series.

My first tip is a simple one, but it always seems to be overlooked. Every time I go into someone else's home to clean, the first thing I notice is that 90% of people leave their beds unmade. I can't handle it. I just can't.

From the time I was a tiny girl, my Mom was ingraining it into my brain to always make my bed. "Always make your bed before you leave your house!" she advised me once. "That way if you get into an accident and die, and people come into your house to get your things, they won't think you're a slob." Her exact words. I mean, if I'm dead it won't matter to me that people think I'm a slob because I didn't turn up my bedsheets. I remember laughing, out loud, at that statement, telling her that I didn't think it was that severe, and she agreed, saying she was just trying to comically make her point.


All it takes is a minute. Sometimes less, to make your bed. So why don't you do it?  For me, its the second thing I do in the morning when I get up. The first is taking Tabby out for some relief. Bless her little bladder. Next I walk back down the hall, into our bedroom, and make the bed. It's part of my routine, it's easy.

This is what our bedroom looks like when I first get up. I usually sleep for another half hour/hour after Aaron leaves for work, then I get up and start my day. And yeeees we sleep with a fan in our bedroom. We only have 1 window air conditioner and it lives in our living room. Please pardon my pink water glass. Keepin' it real, guys. I love you!

Our bedroom is always kept clean, and tidy. But to me, you couldn't tell because of the unmade bed and the stack of pillows on the bench. You can see them in the bottom right corner of the above photo.


I kind of feel stupid giving you a blow by blow about how I make my bed, but.... I'm gonna.

1. Straighten your fitted sheet. This is a must for me, because I cannot stand to get into bed and feel the sheets wadded up around my feet. So if it's popping off of the corners, tighten them back down, straighten it out as best you can. 
2. Adjust your pillows. Whether you lay them down or stand them up, get them into position. I've been standing ours up recently, it makes for a nicer appearance when our bed is fully made, I think.
3. Grab your flat sheet and pull it up and straighten it out.
4. Do the same with your quilt/comforter/blanket. 
5. Once they're lined up and even with each other, fold them over, back towards the middle of the mattress. I sometimes fold it back over on itself, to hide the sheet, but usually that's only when I'm feelin' fancy.
6. Pile on the pillows. I start with the shams that match my bedding set, then I layer my decorative pillows. What's on our bed now is a hodge podge, mish mosh of a couple of different sets, but I like the look, so I go with it.
7. Turn on your pretty little lamps (thinking about changing them out. What do you think?). move your ugly fan to a corner of the room (I usually move it to between my side of the bed and the window, it blows into the hall that way, cooling that end if the house) and take a breath. That took so much energy and so much time. You deserve a break. Go get a glass of sweet tea and rest your achy bones.

But doesn't it look so much better? It frees up the space where I store our pillows at night, so it instantly de-clutters the room.

I change the sheets on the bed once a week, usually on Mondays. However, I am a clean freak, as we all well know, and I sometimes change the sheets twice or three times a week. It depends on a number of things, including how hot it is outside-how much we sweat during the night-, how violent Tabby gets in her sleep, sometimes she tosses and turns so much I swear she's rubbing her butt bald, how much the sheets have stretched etc. I wash our mattress cover and pillow covers (the hypo-allergenic anti-bedbug type covers) once a month or so, along with the quilt or comforter that is on the bed at the present moment. Depending on my mood, I sometimes go through phases where I spray the bedding down daily with Febreeze. I mean, we do have a dog that we share the bed with, so... there's that.


So that's my first tip to keeping a clean house. Make your bed. EVERY DAY. Even on Saturday. Your bedroom will feel more clean and more glamorous if you do!