How Millennials Killed the Top Sheet
Blanket Protection or Just Plain Gross? Bedding Is the Latest Flashpoint in the Battle of the Generations
Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life, a newsletter about navigating life's ups and downs. Every Monday and Thursday we explore family, health, work, and meaning, with the occasional dad joke and dose of inspiration. If you're new around here, read my introductory post, learn about me, or check out our archives. And if you enjoyed this article, please subscribe or share with a friend.
---
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got as a parent was that when you teach your children to make their beds, don’t worry about how poorly they make it. The habit of making the bed is far more important than a perfectly smooth surface. Though it took me a while to get used to the hastily tossed duvet and the unfluffed pillow, making your own bed is on a short list of parental goals for which my wife and I can get passing marks.
But there’s another part of the bed for which we have failed miserably. Or at least I thought we had failed miserably until recently.
Our children refuse to use a top sheet.
Photo credit olgayefimova
Yep, that’s right. They sleep directly on a bottom sheet and directly underneath the duvet. Never mind that the average person has between two to four million sweat glands or, as NPR reported, that we shed a pound of body weight every night from breathing, sweating, and exhaling. Never mind, in other words, that grownups find the habit gross.
My daughters prefer sleeping with no top sheet. And, it turns out, they’re not alone!
As the Wall Street Journal reported this month, the top sheet is the latest mark of a generational divide. (Or, if you prefer, civilization in decline.) “If millennials killed the fussy top sheet," the Journal headline read, "Gen X and Boomers have something to say about it: ‘There are very passionate people on both sides.’”
To its fans, the top sheet is an essential part of a made bed: a crisp, clean buffer between The Body and The Blanket. To its detractors, that same top sheet is a superfluous distraction that is a pain to arrange in the morning and annoyingly bunches around one’s feet at night. Team Top Sheet argues that it’s more hygienic, more proper, just more correct to use one. Team None responds that it’s more efficient to skip it, and if you change your duvet cover regularly, it’s just as clean.
The bedding company Casper has the research to back up the point. In a study the company published in 2019, 67 percent of Americans aged 55+ feel a top sheet is “essential,” though the number drops to 30 percent among 35–54-year-olds and only 26 percent of 18-34 year-olds.
Only three percent of those 65 or older reject using a top sheet.
Image credit DAPA images via Canva
Let’s be clear, there is virtually nothing that Americans older than 65 agree on these days, except that not using a top sheet is a bad idea. Someone should run for president on a bed platform (or is it a platform bed?) To be truthful, Casper’s social media team (which, ahem, is presumably run by people younger than 65) does pile on a bit, pointing out that “47 species of fungi have been found on used bedsheets,” but they are trying to sell bedding after all.
The humble bedsheet, which Meriam-Webster defines as “an oblong piece of usually cotton or linen cloth used as an article of bedding,” was once a radical invention. The first usage dates back to the 15h century. For most of the intervening centuries, only one type of sheet existed—flat. The fitted sheet, originally a flat sheet with garters, was first patented by Bertha Berman on October 10, 1959. The version with pockets that we know today came a few tears later.
The widespread adoption of fitted sheets may have opened the door to the eventual death of flat sheets—Wait, now I have to pay for (and FOLD!) two different kinds of sheets—but the real death knell was sounded by duvets.
A French idea with an English name, duvets, were mostly a European phenomenon until the late 20th century. Like an invasive species, once duvets took hold in American bedrooms, it was only a matter of time before they killed off the top sheet. Only old fogeys like me who grew up with, you know, blankets, have any lingering affection for top sheets, since once of their primary functions, after all, was protecting you from itching.
Kids today, they don’t know from itching.
And even if they did, they’re too busy grabbing for their phones when they roll over to care about their precious skin.
Photo credit Ekaterina Budinovskaya
As Ariel Kaye, herself a millennial and the founder of the Los Angeles company Parachute, which sells topless bedding sets, told the Journal, young people today are simply too pressed for time to mess with the 30 whole seconds it takes to pull up a top sheet in the morning. “For a younger demographic, eliminating that step when making the bed in the morning really gives you a jump start on the day.”
As long as they make their bed, I suppose, the rest of have no choice but to tuck it in and get a jump start on our own day.
☀
Thank you for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, watch my latest TED Talk, or scroll through my other posts. And if you'd like to do a storytelling project with a loved one similar to the one I did with my father, click here to learn more.
You might enjoy reading these posts:
We Tried 25 Brands of Corn Chips. Here’s the Best One
3 Things I Learned About a Better Life from 3 Weeks in Greece
Who Killed Summer? Why Some Schools Start in August and Others in September
Or check out my books that inspired this newsletter: Life Is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families.
Or, you can contact me directly.
---
Cover image credit ronnymd from Getty Images via Canva