Fitted Sheets 101 - Lesson from a drunken Auntie
As I stood folding sheets fresh from the laundry for a friend I was reminded of my most valuable life lesson...
My dear mother had a heart of gold and when I was a teenager she heard, via the family grapevine, that her Auntie Mable needed temporary housing so she invited her to come live with us. What the family grapevine had failed to include was that Auntie Mable had a drinking problem. The temporary housing arrangement was made even more temporary when mother came home from work one day only to find our Auntie drunk as a skunk and apologizing profusely for having "cracked" the bottle of vodka she had found in the cupboard.
However, while with us, I learned a most valuable lesson from sober Auntie Mable. I remember her telling me, she had been previously employed as a housekeeper and learned a method of folding fitted sheets that was fool-proof. She passed that method on to me and I have been forever grateful. Other than teaching me never to "crack" a bottle and get caught, showing me how to fold fitted sheets successfully has been nearly the best thing I've ever learned.
You see, I am not exactly OCD but I do like things neat and orderly. Had I not learned from Auntie Mable how to fold fitted sheets I'm sure it could have been the bane of my existence. I gain an odd sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when opening the linen closet and finding the sheets all neatly stacked.
But it goes much farther than just seeing neat stacks of sheets in the closet. I've come to realize there's a greater life lesson to be learned. Sometimes dealing with things in life can be a little like trying to fold a fitted sheet without the secret "method". We can fight and wrestle with it and it still only turns out a wrinkled mess - an eyesore hidden away in some closet that mocks our ineptitude every time we open the door.
Through the lesson of how to fold a fitted sheet I've come to realize every problem has a solution. The answer may not come in the time frame we may desire but the answer will come if we are patient. It took me any number of tries to learn the "method" of folding fitted sheets. Now it's second nature. I don't even think about what I'm doing when I fold a fitted sheet AND I can accomplish it in mere seconds. I am much more patient in waiting for the solution to a problem knowing I will learn from it and move on gaining knowledge that will eventually be needed for the future. Because I've also found problems tend to revisit us - just as there will always be more laundry to be done.
