Can Making Your Bed Keep You Mentally Fit?
No, I’m not a scientist, just a theoretician, highly unlicensed. My laboratory is my bedroom. My medicine my bed. My patients: myself and my wife Rita who must exercise a bit of patience with me sometimes.
Shortly before World Mental Health Day on 10/10 this year, I developed a hypothesis based on personal research that there is much mental benefit in monotony, if performed nicely and tidily.
That is my theory and the thought occurred to me one morning as I was making our bed for the ten-thousandth time realizing that much more than sweet dreams cometh from well, made-up beds.
Pulling those covers back up over the pillows and performing a kind of Heimlich maneuver to puff them back to fluffy life, I could feel that it was somehow reinforcing my mental wellbeing.
Pummeled by two sleepy heads the night before, our poor battered pillows need resuscitation to be pillowy prepared and inviting for that marvelous elixir to once again repair and replenish our minds and bodies that we call sleep.
I believe there’s no stronger medicine on earth for what ails us than what Gov. Mike Huckabee calls “a good night’s sleep” in TV commercials he does for his favorite sleep aide Relaxium. Ahh, perchance to dream, for in dreams comes solace, sometimes even eureka ideas, answers to prayers.
Perhaps this is why doing the same familiar pulls, twists and tugs in making beds comes a calming effect when every wrinkle and crease is straightened, smoothed, flattened and restored in place. Accompanying is a sense of accomplishment in having turned a messy, slept-in bed back to serenity for us later to embrace.
Why does this habitual exercise make me think of mental health? I feel it derives from doing something that restores, repairs, replenishes and reinvigorates, not just for ourselves, but our significant other with whom we blissfully sleep each night in comfort and safety in that ultimate place of sanctuary—our beds.
It all begins each morning by preparing thy bed to lie upon that night. Is there any science to support such a bedtime theory? Probably not, and it might even sound crazy, but I can assure you there is something that I believe is mentally rewarding in making your bed whether it is a TV bed from TV Beds Northwest or a regular bed.
Now another day starts. The action begins. But I know our bed will be a lady-in-waiting all made-up, inviting us to a comfortable conclusion to another busy day.
May your mental health sleep well . . . and to all a good night!
Tom Madden is a tireless writer of countless published articles, his blog and five books, including his latest, WORDSHINE MAN, available on Amazon. He also creates TV series like his latest concept Xtra Terresla whose main character is modeled after Tesla founder Leon Musk. He has another TV series in the works called Mar-a-Lago Empire. Madden is the founder and CEO of TransMedia Group, an award-winning PR firm serving clients worldwide since 1981.
