Mommy's Project 52:19 Folding

I don't have any pictures of things well folded in my house.  No superbly lit shots of some oragami thing my kid made, no stacks of perfectly folded towels in a neat and orderly linen closet, and no cute pictures of my kids helping fold laundry with grand smiles on their faces.  Nada.  None of that.  What I do have is visions in my head of trying to get something folded when it has other ideas, and folding nicely isn't one of them.

I stopped making folded birthday or other occasion cards.  I now use simple and small pieces of card stock and adorn both sides with the appropriate greeting.  They are well received, I have to admit, and they make the process of card making much more enjoyable.

For a while there, I wasn't even folding my bath towels in a million places just to get them to fit on the shelves in my linen closet.  I rolled them.  That's right, one fold lengthwise, and then you roll that sucker from end to end.  Nice rolled towels, and it sort of looks like a fancy hotel or spa, minus the calming music, sage green walls, and people pampering your mind and body.

My kitchen and bathroom towels are another story.  Those buggers don't just get folded in half and tossed over a towel bar.  I like to do the old fold each side into the middle, then fold it in half.  It takes more thought than just folding it in half, but I think it's worth it.  :)

 
Another thing that I no longer, OK rarely, do is to wrap gifts in paper.  Seriously, have you ever tried to wrap something that's not in a box, or which has different sized ends?  OK, even boxes are a challenge!!  I cut too much paper, I didn't cut enough paper, I wrapped it upside down, I can't hold this piece down and get another piece of tape and get it to stay on the paper while I try to fold the other side and get that to stay while I get another piece of tape.....corners suck!

Let's not even start with paper or reusable grocery bags.  I'm very anal about refolding those damn things back to the way they were, and it never fails that one little dent in the fold screws up the whole operation.  I get so annoyed when I unload my groceries and have to spend more than a few seconds trying to get my bags to fold up nicely so I can stack them on top of the fridge or put them back in the back of the car.  Hello, OCD, it's so annoying to have you show up at times like this!

Let's be honest with each other now.  What is the #1 thing people complain about, give advice about, and simply cannot do when it comes to folding.  Think about this one for a minute.  Someone somewhere along the line came up with the genius idea to put elastic in four corners, make the four sides different lengths, and make the corners just slightly too short to stretch around the thing they're supposed to cover.  That's right.  We're talking - FITTED SHEET!

What genius came up with this thing?  I mean, I get it, it is helpful to have a covering that doesn't get rolled up around your legs every time you toss or turn in bed.  It's an essential in bedding.  The fact remains, though, it's a pain in the ass to FOLD!

I've come up with several methods over the years to get the fitted sheet folded such that it doesn't look like my four year old did it.  I've pretty much exhausted all my creativity in my effort to fold the dreaded fitted sheet any better than my four.  So you know what I did?  I gave up on it.  Today, my sheets are all folded to the best of my ability and stored within the set's pillow case.  If you haven't tried this, you've got to. 

How many times have you gone to the linen closet, only to find that one of your two pillow cases is missing?  OK, so there isn't a pillow case thief on the loose, but it got pulled out with the other set of sheets the last time you made the other bed, or it got folded up and put with the wrong set, whatever.  It's not there.  Well, the solution is to use one of the pillow cases and put all the folded (to the best of you ability) inside the case.  Genius!  Not only do you not lose that one pillow case, but you can hide the fact that you spend an hour trying to fold your fitted sheet and finally gave up and just stuffed the damn thing in the pillow case, and by the luck of the draw you were able to stuff it in the linen closet under all the other linens and nobody is the wiser.  Only you know the secret, and anyone who sees your linen closet (which is probably only you), is nothing but impressed at how everything is so nicely placed together in the closet.

The day my kids come home wanting to do oragami, I'm leaving.