Flat sheet versus contour sheet

[washabear]

Does anyone here use a flat sheet instead of a contour sheet for the bottom sheet? Every time I have a tantrum trying to fold a contour sheet neatly as it comes out of the dryer, I am reminded of a Martha Stewart episode from years ago in which she said she preferred to use a flat sheet for the bottom sheet. I think I would like to try it. Anyone else do that, and how does it work for you?

Thanks.

 

[DADoES]

Folding

A fitted sheet.

 

[jeffg]

Oh, so she's the one? I've wondered where this awful trend was coming from in some hotels. Mostly cheap hotels. I thought it was just laziness.

Top sheets don't work as fitted sheets. They don't stay in place, bunch up in the middle, and inevitably you wind up waking up with God-awful creases in your face and/or body.

 

[dalangdon]

Actually, most of the hotels and motels I worked at used flat sheets as bottom sheets. Even the classy ones (Westin and Four Seasons) Granted, I've been away from the biz for nine years, so times might have changed, but I think they did it just to standardize the type of sheets they have.

Personally, I don't bother too much with folding a fitted sheet. They're not going to be seen by anyone I don't know.

 

[jeffg]

Yes, even hotel chains that should know better are doing this. Some no longer even bother to tuck the flat sheet in around the mattress. Again, just utter laziness IMO.

 

[launderess]

Am sorry, but the above is plain incorrect. Flat sheets have been used for ages for top and bottom sheets and properly made mitered (hospital)corners do NOT come undone and or result in a messy/loose bottom sheets.

Worked in nursing and went to nursing school, and have made more beds in hospitals than I care to recall, both occupied and unoccupied, and am here to tell you MY bottom sheets stayed put. Indeed all the nurses and nursing assistants I ever worked with had the same results.

OTHO the fitted sheets used today in hospitals are a poor excuse for a bottom sheet. More often than not they do not stay on at the corners and move about the bed so much the thing is no more than a crumpled mess within a few hours.

Fitted sheets are a unique American invention, developed to save housewives labour when doing the beds. While they have moved across the pond to Europe and the UK, many households there still prefer flat sheets. Indeed many European and UK high end linen dealers often do not sell fitted sheets as a rule. One purchases a flat sheet which is then sent to a seamstress to be made over into a fitted sheet.

Flat sheets are far more economical than fitted sheets for several reasons:

If unadored, plain flat sheets can serve as either top or bottom sheet.

To save on laundry, and or when clean linens are in short supply, the top flat sheet made the bottom sheet, and only one fresh flat sheet is used as a top sheet. We did this all the time in hospital.

Ironing fitted sheets either by hand or mangle is a royal pain. Indeed many commercial laundries charge more to iron fitted sheets.

If of good quality cotton or linen, flat sheets can be made over when they no longer offer service as bed sheets. Large sheets can be cut down for smaller beds. All flat sheets can be cut up and used to make any sort of thing that requires fabric. Well used linen is very soft and durable and was NEVER chucked out. It was turned into diapers and or burp cloths for the nursery, bandages, aprons, etc.

L.

 

[danemodsandy]

Oy.

While a flat sheet can work fine as a bottom sheet, it takes a sheet of far higher quality than most available today, including those sold under the name of You Know Who (and I do own some).

The important point of quality here is the overall size of the flat sheet. To increase profits, manufacturers have been snipping away at the size of flat sheets for decades now. When I was a child, a flat sheet used as a top sheet would drape all the way down the sides of the mattress, touching the floor. Nowadays, you're quite lucky to get a top sheet that drapes down the side of the mattress as far as the middle of the box spring. You Know Who's sheets fall into this latter category.

To use a flat sheet successfully as a bottom sheet, you need both sheets that are generous in size, and someone willing to be an energetic bed-maker. You have to expend the energy to tuck the sheet under the mattress as far as it will go, lying flat between the mattress and box spring. You can't just bunch the sheet up between the mattress and box spring, close to the edge. This is warm, aerobic work- you will get a "pump" going. You also have to work to get the sheet taut over the mattress; when you do the second side of the bed, some stretching is necessary.

All things considered, I prefer a contour sheet. I know how to make a bed properly with a flat one, but doing that so that "you can bounce a quarter" on the result, with impeccably mitred corners, takes more energy and time than I'm willing to give to the job, plus it has to be done again from scratch every day, which is not the case with a contour sheet. I have other things to do with my life, and I'm willing to bet you do, too.

 

[danemodsandy]

P.S.:

Launderess's point about contour sheets coming undone at the corners is well made. Like anything else, contour sheets vary in quality, and they should be used properly.

You want a fairly generous tuck-under with contour sheets, at least six or eight inches. This is not easy to find; most contour sheets allow something like two or three inches. You also need to take a bit of time while bedmaking to observe two points:

1) You should be scrupulous about fitting the corners of the sheet onto the mattress, so that there is no bunching, and so that the tuck-under portion of the corner is really tucked under.
2) You should tuck the tuck-under portion of the sides firmly and completely under the mattress, too.

With a good contour sheet, correctly used, you shouldn't have a lot of trouble with corners coming undone. There is an enormous difference in doing it right, using a good sheet, and the sloppy job most people do, using a sheet of ordinary quality.

 

[jeffg]

Launderess, you have a knack for telling other people what their experiences have been. It's very irritating.

I don't know about "properly made mitered (hospital) corners". I can tell you fitted sheets are what one finds in U.S. hotels that give a damn, ever since I can remember, and I've also lost count of the number of times I've woken up in hotel beds looking like Freddy Kreuger because flat sheets were being used as fitted.

 

[launderess]

If I've Offended You Today, Please Tell Your Friends

The fact that "fitted sheets are found in hotels that give a damn" is neither here nor there. What hotels use for bed lines, as with hospitals has more to do with several factors, only one of which is patient/guess comfort is but one.

As for hotels "giving a damn", it may come as a surprise to you that many hotels, from five star down to nil, do not own their linens, and or launder them in house. Like hospitals, most either hire linens from a rental service, or at least send them out to a commercial laundry. Either way it is usually the service that determines many parameters of the linen, which explains why there is so much polyester/cotton blend about.

As Danemodsandy pointed out, making a bed with two flat sheets is more involved than using fitted bottom sheets. What that effort costs in terms of time, labour and linen costs is weighed against savings from using fitted sheets. If one maid can make forty beds ber hour using fitted sheets, versus say half that amount using two flat sheets, then you have your answer. Also as more and more housekeeping work in hotels is done by workers with limited English speaking and understanding skills, it is easier to train someone to use fitted sheets than than flat sheets with mitered corners.

As for my knack of "speaking from my experiences", what else should one speak from then? Just as you are certian of your relations with contour sheets, which by the way extends only from sleeping on them in various hotels. I, on the other hand have years of practial experience in the matter, not to mention shelves of all manner of household management, linen care, nursing,nursing management, and so forth. Therefore one feels quite sure in relating one's "experiences" as it were. Should you find this irritating, am very sorry of it, however that does not alter the facts on the ground.

Launderess

 

[jeffg]

As always I bow to the group mind. If a consensus is saying flat sheets can be used as bottom sheets if they're tucked in properly, I'll take your word for it. My experience (and only point) is, never once have I woken up with Freddy Kreuger Face and found a fitted bottom sheet on my bed. Flat sheets (or rather, improperly tucked flat sheets) have been the culprit every time.

 

[launderess]

Actually, one common complaint by those sleeping on beds with mitered corners is that the sheets were made too tight. The final effect being toes being "crunched" under the top sheet as one streched out.

Again from my experiences, we were taught to always pinch a bit of the top linens, at the center, after the bed was done and pull up slightly. This would loosen things up a bit for better comfort. Think many persons knowingly or not, resented the tight swaddled feeling of too tight linens, and moved about allot to "get comfortable". The effect being pulling the sheets out until they were loose enough to suit.

L.

 

[panthera]

It has been my experience that those who have the least to c

...spend the most time attacking others.

I have followed Laundress' many threads for several years and can not recall a single instance of her "telling other people what their experiences have been."
In marked contrast to the majority of us, Laundress expresses herself using the full range of the English language, including the subjunctive mood and indirect pronouns.
This might prove confusing to those lesser skilled in the twin arts of thinking clearly and writing so that those who have not yet attained the jaundiced perspective of a long life's experiences might understand her.

Her knowledge and willingness to share are of enormously higher value to me than the moaning, pissing and whining in which some overindulge.

 

[frigilux]

My solution: I have only one set of sheets for my bed. I launder them, then put them right back on the bed. No need to iron or fold!

 

[danemodsandy]

In Defence of Both of You...

...A bed well and properly made with two flat sheets of superb quality can be absolutely delightful to sleep in, and one does not wake up with a bad case of Kreuger Face.

And Launderess's point about the higher margin of utility found in flat sheets is entirely correct. Really fine hotels that manage their linen in-house (like the Plaza used to do; I don't know what they're doing now since the renovation), even recycle the sheets as dustcloths. When a sheet wears beyond acceptable guest use, it's dyed yellow or pink and torn into dusters. The dyeing is done to enable management to spot housekeepers using a good sheet to tear into dusters (it can be a long trek from a hotel's upper floor to the linen rooms of a big hotel; the temptation to save steps is enormous).

But it's nearly impossible to find help willing to do high-quality bedmaking on a consistent basis, and when you do find someone capable of keeping up standards all day and all week long, you have to pay them very well. Most hotels just won't spend the money, because of the competition on room rates. Only the finest hotels, like New York's Carlyle, or Paris's Ritz, have that standard of personnel any more, and they can only do it because they have ultra-wealthy clientele who put comfort and quality considerations ahead of the price of the room.

What often happens is that hotel management, like everyone else, wants to have it both ways. They want the cost-savings of flat sheets, plus the cost-savings of unskilled labour, and that's when the guest ends up with a case of Kreuger Face. A lot of hotels nowadays put on a lot of airs in their publicity that prove quite unjustified when one actually suffers through a stay there. I recently had a downright gruelling experience in a Louisville hostelry of pretensions; the decor was impressive, and there were a lot of fancy "touches" about, but the room was a long way from being truly clean, and the food and the so-called "service" were both horrendously bad.

It all comes down to what you want to spend your time and money on, I think. I personally can't live without well-shined shoes, so I'll put in the time and effort on those. But my bed is not so important; I ask only that it be clean, comfortable and presentable, so I do a little judicious skimping there.

 

[dalangdon]

Uh oh, I sense a good, old-fashioned linen closet spat in the works. We'll REALLY need cake and coffee after this one ;-)

I haven't really looked at a hotel bed in years: I just fall asleep and don't worry about it. However, I've never had an experience where I woke up with all the sheets undone, and the bottom sheet pulled out. That DOES happen at home, from time to time, because I'm not always as careful as I could be about getting the fitted sheet in place, but never in a hotel.

An informal phone poll, conducted just now by me, indicate that big hotels generally still run their own laundries, as they have so many pieces to deal with: uniforms, table linens, bed linens, towels, valet, etc. But they don't want to spend a lot of time sorting and folding things like fitted sheets. That's why they use flat sheets - and I daresay that most who "give a damn" still use flats, they just train their maids on how to properly make beds. Maybe there are some who have made the switch. There's a few hotel people on this site, maybe they can speak to more contemporary standards.

Now, let me stick up for the maids. Maids aren't lazy. If they are, they get shown the door real quick. They're many times rushed or overworked, as hotels load the rooms down with more and more pouf ("heavenly beds" and all that nonsense), but no one - and I mean no one - works harder in a hotel than the maids and the stewarding people. And makes take a lot of grief - the idiots who accuse them of stealing, the horrible people who leave disgusting messes behind, the guests who insist on watching them and trying to tell them how to do their job, etc. I don't know how they put up with it.

Lastly, if there really was a scenario where "one maid can make forty beds per hour", the hotel would find a way to clone him or her ;-)

 

[danemodsandy]

Dan:

I think I gave a wrong impression here. You're quite right, maids aren't lazy. But they are given too much to do, in too little time, and your statement about "heavenly" beds is spot on the money. Too much frou-frou and too little real quality (like enough time to do things right) is much of the problem.

And those people are often horribly underpaid. I can't imagine anyone keeping up any kind of resolve to make every bed perfectly when they're making $10 an hour.

There's an old Jewish saying, "A fish stinks from the head." The dreadful hotel experience I had recently was obviously the result of poor management with lots of expectations, and no depth of pocket to back them up. The room I was in should not have been in the inventory of any hotel worth its salt, let alone rented out to a returning guest; it was my third stay there.

I do hope whatever savings they achieved by skimping on housekeeping staff is worth it to them, because they'll never see me there again. And a pox on "heavenly beds"- if I wanted to sleep in the middle of a bunch of poofy, bunched-up stuff, I could do it a lot cheaper than $175 a night.

 

[oldhouseman]

Well said

Laundress and Panthera. I do not use fitted sheets. My beds are all made in the 1700's and 1800's so standard sheets do not fit anyway. I have them made and only use flat sheets. I have one bed that was made to sleep four children -two at each end!

I enjoy having guests that don't know anything about old bedsteads or bed materials. In the winter I put feather ticks on the beds and dress them in heavy cotton sheets and handmade quilts. In the summer the feather ticks go into storage and light cotton sheets are brought out. My guests go to sleep in a comfortable bed with proper sheets.

The art of good living includes properly made sheets custom for the bed. It does not require alot of money. I see standard sheets in the stores and cringe to think what it must be like to use such poorly made goods.

My used and worn sheets get turned into other things such cleaning rags, neckerchiefs for myself to use while working in the garden and on the dogs to dress them up a bit at times. I have even used one to make a table cloth and picnic napkins.

Laundress is right. Fitted sheets will not be found in my linen press.

 

[washabear]

Wow. Thanks for your replies. I didn’t intend to start a controversy; I just asked a simple question. Sorry if I instigated anything.

Thanks for the video, dadoes. At first I thought it was an example of mild OCD, but since I’m the one who admitted to having tantrums over trying to fold sheets, perhaps I ‘m the one who has it! In any event, let’s try it and see how it goes.

I think I will try a pair of flat sheets and see how I like them versus the others. One plus might be that they won’t ball up as much in the washer and dryer. I hate when that happens.

Thanks again. You people are the best!