Making Your Bed: A Metaphor for Life

We’ve all been there. We just can’t get it together. We wake up late, throw some clothes on, and leave the house without making our beds.  As the school year nears its end, I confess that I find it harder and harder to wake up in the morning, which makes it challenging to complete my morning routine, including making my bed. Making your bed can be so much more than the act of physically making your bed. 

 

Last September, we podcasted about our daily choices, including “brushing your teeth or taking a shower.” I find that among the choices that I have to make in the morning to avoid running late for work is the choice of making my bed or not. Do I make that choice? I admit, not always. Some days, I just throw the top sheet over the bed and call it “made.” On other days, I take my time to make all the sheets straight, fix my pillows, and smooth out all the wrinkles in the bed. Those are the good days. The days I wake up and have time to do everything I want to accomplish in the mornings, which includes relaxing and having a cup of coffee (rarely happens). As I sleep later and later, I’m lucky even to get fully dressed as I run out the door. Sometimes, the act of physically making my bed is daunting.

Aside from physically making your bed, the concept itself can apply to the consequences of life choices. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “you’ve made your bed, now lie in it,” this may be due to the fact that you made some sort of choice that didn’t have the best consequence.

Think of your life as a bed. What kind of bed do you have? The type of bed you currently sleep in says a lot about you, and not just how the bed looks and feels, but the appearance. What color comforter do you have? Do you even have one? I currently don’t. I find that it’s easier to wash a quilt over a comforter. Do you decorate your bed? Do you make your bed every day? What kind of pillows do you like? I personally like backrest pillows, but I most recently discovered the most amazing pillows, Memory Foam Cluster pillows, from Walmart that haven’t gone flat since I bought my first one two years ago. I have since replaced all my pillows with that particular pillow.

I have slept on many different types of beds in my life, and they often reflected the different financial situations I was experiencing at the time. For example:

• The first real bed (not a crib) I ever had was a bed that was purchased by my parents. We went to Golden’s Furniture (a place that doesn’t exist anymore), and I looked at all the beds. Eventually, I chose a canopy bed of princess-like quality. The bed was white with pink flowers and a pink canopy. I slept in that same bed and never asked to change it until I moved out of my parent’s house at 18. That bed represented the comfort I had at home and my childhood as an only child and youngest grandchild – the “princess” of the family. As I grew up, the bed didn’t grow with me, and I never asked for a bigger or less-youthful bed.
• After living in a series of dorm rooms, Christen and I moved into our first real apartment, and I chose not to bring the “princess” bed from my room at my parents’ house. Instead, I opted for the cheaper, cooler, college-like futon that I could easily move from bed to couch depending on how much room I wanted in my small apartment bedroom. That bed represented freedom to choose. I bought the bed myself with money from my job at Braum’s, an ice cream shop I worked at while I attended college. That bed also represented the financial instability of a college student on their own. After six months, the bed broke, and I started sleeping on the floor on top of the mattress. I named the bed my “magic carpet” and it was actually quite comfortable after I stacked layers of blankets and comforters on top.
• When I moved to my very own apartment, my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday/Christmas and I told them I wanted a real bed because I was finally tired of sleeping on the floor. I didn’t want my childhood bed, but a real, comfortable bed. My parents and I went bed shopping. We ended up at a place that also doesn’t exist anymore called Mattress Outfitters. The salesman didn’t see my mom coming that day. After a couple of hours of my dad and meI laying on every bed in the store, we left with a brand-new bed about half the price that it was originally priced for, a mattress protector, and a bed frame my mom talked the salesman into giving us for free. I had never slept on anything so comfortable. The bed felt amazing and I felt like I had upgraded in life (with the help of my parents, of course). The bed represented coming back into the fold. At that point in my life, I had dropped out of college for a couple of years and was working at Dillard’s, selling shoes. My grandmother talked me into going back to college, so I moved to a tiny two-room apartment across the street from the University of North Texas and started taking classes that fall. I kept that bed through the rest of college and my first teaching job.
• The next bed I slept on was the most uncomfortable couch in my grandmother’s living room. A few years after I graduated college, my mother had a series of strokes and became very ill. I was substitute teaching and living in the most expensive apartment I’d ever lived in, struggling to pay the bills. I quit my job and put everything I owned in storage to move in with my grandmother and take care of my mom. I spent two and a half months sleeping in hospital chairs, hospital couches, and, sometimes, my car, driving back and forth from the hospital to my grandmother's house (an hour away). I slept on the couch for about six months before my cousins helped me clean out my grandmother’s sewing room enough to take my bed out of storage. The couch represented a disruption in my life that eventually was overcome. After I was able to move into my grandmother’s sewing room and my mom was able to somewhat take care of herself, I found a local teaching job.
• When my ex-husband and I got our first house, we bought a used king-sized bed that wasn’t very comfortable. I had always thought that you finally made it in life if you could afford a king-size bed. I traded in my comfortable, small bed, for an uncomfortable king-size one. This bed represented my first marriage. It was something that I thought I wanted, but I sacrificed my comfort and peace for it. The bed was difficult to maintain and move during the many moves I endured in that marriage. When I moved after my divorce, I left that bed on the side of the road. That also meant I didn’t have a bed moving into my post-divorce apartment, the first apartment I had lived in since my mom had her strokes eight years before.
• This brings me to my current bed. It’s not the most comfortable bed that I’ve slept in, but it represents the uncomfortable moments that I went through to get to this bed. It also represents freedom from the struggles I had gone through to get to this bed. I had finally made a bed that I was comfortable lying in. After my divorce, I had no credit. It took me months to find an apartment that would accept me for who I was and the money that I independently made. I had barely any furniture to place in that apartment (I still don’t) and I was driving my grandmother’s car. My uncle offered me the brand new bed that he bought to place in my mom’s old room. My grandmother had recently moved to the nursing home and didn’t have a use for the bed. I jumped at this opportunity because I could barely afford to move into a new place much less buy a new bed.

What does all of this say about me? My current bed is pretty basic, but I have spent almost two years making it into the most comfortable bed I’ve ever been in. After my divorce, I decluttered my existence where only the basics of who I am exist and that includes my bed. I opt for a simple quilt in aesthetically pleasing colors. Underneath, I alternate between a micro plush blanket and a sherpa blanket, depending on the temperatures outside. I cover my bed with the most comfortable and colorful pillows of various shapes and sizes. Do I always make my bed? It depends on my time and mood, but I can tell you that I feel better when I get into a freshly made bed at night. My cats even prefer a freshly made bed with clean sheets. So, I do like to take that time in the morning.

Making your bed and lying in it has meant many different things to me over the years. I love my current bed and have no problem lying in it. Can that bed be improved? I work on improving it every day, little by little. 

I want to hear from our readers. Do you make your bed every day? Are you comfortable with the bed you are lying in? What are some things you can do to improve your current situation? Comment below!