2026, education, Family, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

To Wrinkle or Not to Wrinkle…

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When I was growing up, ironing was as art form.   In my family, EVERYTHING got ironed, from my dad’s work shirts, to shirts and dresses, towels and sheets.  I don’t remember underwear getting the once over, but I could just be suppressing that memory.  My mother had me ironing pretty early – starting when I was in first grade – and she instructed me in the correct way to do every kind of garment/fabric.  When my dad’s ship came in, Nonny’s first luxury was to send out the laundry to be ironed.  She still washed and dried everything but then it went into a bag to get picked up by the ironing person twice a week.  I can still see the ironed items (in garment bags) hanging in the front closet after they were returned in pristine shape.

I do have an iron, but it gets lonely in the closet.  The only thing I’ve ironed in the last year was the quilt that I inherited from Nonny (well, inherited is probably the wrong word.  “helped myself to” is more like it).  And the only reason I ironed it was that I was adding sticky fabric tape to several places where the fabric had basically disintegrated over the years.  YA probably uses the iron and ironing board maybe once a quarter.

When I went off to college, Nonny did send a little travel iron with me.  Snort.  The very first things that I quit ironing were my sheets.  They stretch out on your bed and you sleep on them, for goodness sakes.  Sheets were quickly followed by just about everything else. I never looked back.

With this in mind, I’m not sure what the heck I was looking at on YouTube a few days ago, but for some reason, a few posts came up about how to fold a fitted sheet.  Then I made the fatal error of clicking on one.  Now my feed is full of folks seriously showing me how to fold a fitted sheet — all of them basically the same method – sticking the two lower corners into the top upper corners, then folding into thirds or fourths and then folding again.  It LOOKS easy, but I remember trying this years ago and it’s not that simple.  And if you’re dealing with slippery sheets, of which I have several sets for the summer, the method doesn’t really work at all.  I did find a YouTube of how I do it…

I don’t actually chuck it into the closet.  After I’ve wadded it up, I then put the folded top sheet and the pillow cases on top and then gently slide the whole pile onto the shelf.  I’m not a savage.

Toward the end of her life, I know for a fact that Nonny was still ironing some of her clothing, but she had abandoned ironing the sheets, thank goodness.  Whenever I would visit and help her with laundry, she would have us do the two-person fold.  I’m now sure what she was doing on her own.  I hope she was wadding the fitted sheet into a ball, but somehow I doubt it!

Do you fold fitted sheets?  What method do you use?  Do you use a top sheet?  Linen closet or drawers?

45 thoughts on “To Wrinkle or Not to Wrinkle…”

  2. Most of the time folding fitted sheet is a two-person endeavor at our house. If not, I would spread it on the bed and fold it from there rather than trying to fold it in the air. Most often the fitted sheet, when it comes from the laundry, goes back on the bed. No folding is required.
    Our linen closet is full of towels. Our extra sheets and pillowcases reside in a trunk in the living room. The trunk sits on short legs I painted Chinese red and added. It serves as our coffee table. On the lid is a sticker for Lutherland, a summer camp in the Poconos (I researched it once).

    If you sew, an iron is essential. Robin has one in her studio and I have my own, along with an ironing board, in mine. I also am in the habit of ironing my cotton shirts when they come out of the wash.

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  3. As a little girl, Mom taught me how to iron the basics – we just did pillow cases and the “head” of the sheets.. Later she taught me the rest, and when in the Trailer Court, my friend Sandy and I would do people’s ironing in the wash house for a little cash.

    Someone taught me years ago how to fold a fitted sheet so it will lie flat, and I do that (in the air usually) if it’s going in the closet. It appeals to my sense of order, I guess. But it’s tricky, and if you mess up at the start, it can take a while.

    These days I rarely iron, only if something is looking really scruffy. Or for sewing, as Bill mentioned.

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    1. Sometimes I wish my life were this straightforward. Unfortunately, I don’t always get around to getting the sheets into the dryer on the same day or I don’t manage to get down to the basement to get the sheets. I suppose if I didn’t have like nine different sets of silly patterned sheets I manage to make it a priority!!

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  5. I usually just put the sheets back on the bed after washing and drying. If I have to fold a fitted sheet, I lay it out on the floor first and go from there. During the cool/cold weather months I hardly ever iron anything since I usually am wearing sweaters, sweatshirts , or fleece plus jeans. During the warm/hot weather months I do need to iron some of my tops as well as a few shorts/capri pants.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    My early ironing years were much as VS describes, spraying and sprinkling the laundry. My mother did give up on ironed sheets, though. The favorite thing to iron was Dad’s handkerchiefs. Short, flat, simple. Don’t starch them, though. That gets in the way of absorption!

    Years ago I started to save the zippered plastic bags in which some bedding is packaged. Now any extra fitted sheets are folded and stuffed in those, zippered tight so they can not cause trouble in the linen closet.

    OT: Husband is not doing well. He caught the back-to-school virus while at my sister’s house. It seems to be knocking him back significantly. I will be working with his Drs. to determine what to do.

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  7. I have been, until recently a firm adherent of ironing. Comes with being a seamstress and devotee if line drying.

    My mother was a serious user of the iron, including sprinkling things with a soda bottle filled with distilled water with a special sprinkler top.

    I admit, I miss the smell and feel of well pressed 100% cotton sheets.

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      1. Perhaps, but there is a ‘finish’ linen and cotton get only when damp pressed,a mere steam iron won’t do it.

        So much archaic lore crammed in my head!

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      5. I do remember using a Seven-Up bottle with a sprinkler cap when learning how to iron all those decades ago. Does anyone remember manglers? We had one and it was used to iron sheets. There were knee pedals to control the roller and we had to be very careful not to burn our fingers.

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  8. I use the iron about once a quarter any more. About 12 years ago, when my spouse took full time work at a university in Taiwan, and had hundreds of undergraduates to deal with, she was down to only a few blouses to wear that wouldn’t show “not being ironed.” So, one day I ironed every blouse that was hanging in her closet, and she was able to go for weeks wearing something different every day. I referred to something I had ironed as a “silk blouse”. She denied that she owned anything of that sort, but that’s what the label said!

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    1. OT to you.
      I am just finishing an excellent book on early 19th century China, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the end of China’s Last Golden Age by Stephen R. Platt.
      It’s a remarkable story of traders (mostly British) and missionaries (mostly Protestant) and their dealings with Chinese traders and Chinese government officials. It has added immensely to my meager knowledge of Chinese history.

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  9. I was taught to iron my dad’s dental gowns (short-sleeved, cotton-poly, zip-front smocks with patch pockets and oxford-style collars) when I was in second or third grade. I used a squirt bottle for misting (I don’t remember what kind). Some of this is partially repressed in my memory because I really hated it, and it was the first time I can remember really feeling frustrated with my mom. She stood and watched me do it, making sure I got every crease pressed exactly as she wanted it. I was frustrated because part of me wondered why I had to do it if she had time to stand there and supervise me and be so picky about it. Anyway…

    My mom is the reason I have some minor OCD tendencies. There are some things I have to do to perfection. Folding fitted sheets is one of those things. I lay the sheet out flat on the bed and arrange it so the fitted edges are laying inside the sheet, as flat as possible. Then I find the top two corners at the top of the seams. I bring the bottom two corners up to meet the top two corners, making sure the fitted part stays inside and lies flat. Then I bring the new bottom edge up to the top, make sure everything is square, then I repeat the last step one more time. Now I have a narrow rectangle. I grab the right edge and fold it toward the left, making sure things stay square, then repeat.

    I’ve tried to let some of this stuff slide. I use the iron as little as possible. Today’s clothing is made to be easy to care for, and I don’t have fancy clothing anyway. I do have some cotton/linen fabrics that look better if they’ve been lightly ironed, so sometimes I do it. I avoid it though. All I have is a travel iron and a tiny ironing board.

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      1. I don’t have any negative recollections around ironing, fortunately. Although I will say that, even after all these years I have a picture in my minds eye of the house we lived in when I learned to iron. And I can tell you that Nonny would say that Robert was ironing incorrectly, although we didn’t see the whole process in that little clip. But Nonny always said you had to start with the smaller bits then work up so collar, cuffs, yolk, two front panels starting with around the buttons and then the back of the shirt at the very end. She said you had to do it in this order because if you did it any other way, the big bits would get rumpled while you were ironing the little bits. I have to admit I have never tested this theory.

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  12. My house doesn’t have a linen closet. Usually sheets get stored in a drawer, and towels in a cabinet in the laundry room. I’d love to have an actual linen closet.

    Another thing I would love to have is a sewing room where I could have an ironing board permanently set up. The thing I most dislike about ironing is setting up an ironing board. I do have a small board I can just put on the bed, but still.

    I have some vintage cotton clothes that definitely need to be ironed, and I can imagine the world’s housewives giving a huge collective hallelujah when permanent press became a thing.

    Fitted sheets – I do the thing where you tuck one corner into its mirror image, then kind of toss the other end on the bed and fold, fold, fold, and call it good enough.

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  13. Yes, I’m glad someone mentioned permanent press – that and new fabric blends are some of the reasons we no longer have to iron all the livelong day anymore.

    The house we bought in Marshalltown, IA in 1960 had a drop-down ironing board from a wall cabinet in the kitchen. Very handy, though it blocked one entrance when it was in use.

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