A Blind Guide To Making The Bed

Making the bed sounds like a “sighted” job, until you break it into touch-based steps you can repeat every day. We’re sharing a practical, blind-friendly method that turns a messy comforter and a pile of pillows into a clean, consistent setup using simple tactile cues, not guesswork.

We start with the small detail that changes everything: the comforter tag. That little flag becomes an orientation tool so you always know which corner you’re holding and which color you’re putting on top. From there, we use the bed frame as a straight edge to line up the bottom, then work side to side to pull fabric across the mattress and smooth wrinkles in a way that’s fast, reliable, and surprisingly effective.

We also get real about safety and routine. Before you start moving around the bed, put on shoes so you don’t end up with stubbed toes or cuts from frames and objects. Then we show how to create that neat folded-over look at the top by measuring with hand widths, plus an easy system for placing extra pillows by lining them up against the wall and centering by feel. We even point to DVR resources that can help you learn more independent living skills for vision loss.

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Transcript

The Making-The-Bed Challenge

SPEAKER_00 0:19

All right, challenge for the day. Making the bed. Please don't pay any attention to my room. It's a little messy. Please don't tell the wife. Miss Brendan is out of town. So, making the bed. It's easier than you think. Of course, I grew up making the bed at my house, at home. I grew up, my bed had to be made before I well, before I went anywhere. School, play, whatever it might be.

Using The Tag As A Compass

SPEAKER_00 0:49

So, first tip, blind folks, if you're watching, or if you're just blind, curious, and you're watching, either way, blind folks what to do. It I've never had official training for this, but it's pretty easy. Your your big comforter bed spread thing, whatever, it usually has a little ticket flag thing. I think you're not supposed to remove it. Who knows? I keep them on there,

Safety First Put On Shoes

SPEAKER_00 1:12

even though Brenda would rather take them off. I keep it on there because it makes it easy. I that lets me know if I want this color up on top, then this little flag tag goes on the far right corner, which is basically the bottom of the bed. If I want the other color, because you know Brenda's all cutesy and whatnot, and so we can reverse colors, whatever, then the tag goes on the other side of the foot of the bed. Okay, so if you can't see me, which I can't see the bed, you don't feel bad. I'm standing at the foot of the bed, so looking directly ahead of me is probably a couple of pillows leaning up against the wall because that's how I started. Now, if I'm being completely honest, whether you're diabetic, whether you're blind, whatever it might be, when you get up to make the bed in the morning, please put on some shoes first. Please, please, please do that. I don't know how many times I've kicked stuff under the bed. There's these poles under the little bedstand or whatever, whatever it might be, please put on some shoes. I don't want you to get hurt. I've stubbed my toe more than once. It's not fun at all. I think I actually even cut my toe open one time walking around trying to do stuff like this. So, again, just be mindful, be careful, pay attention. I'll do a video later on the podcast talking about why, how I went blind. I talked a little bit about some of the the story, how it happened physically, you know, like what happened. Well, maybe mentally, physically, emotionally, whatever. Um, but yeah, why? What actually caused the blindness? I didn't talk about that. So I'm gonna do another video. Diabetes is part of it. There's your short answer.

Lining Up The Comforter By Frame

SPEAKER_00 3:00

So, what I'm doing now is after I hit the foot of the bed, I made sure everything was kind of lined up. I can line it up again. I'm very fortunate that we are using a stand, not like a box spring, but even if there's a box spring, there's a stand or a frame that you can line up the bottom of your bed spread with or your comforter, whatever. So, on the side of the bed, you do the same thing. You grab your comforter or your bedspread, whatever. I'm gonna just say comforter, you grab that and line it up with the bottom where that frame is at. I'm getting a little winded. I usually do this. Is almost a workout for me. The next thing I do is I come back to the foot of the bed to the far side, the opposite side of the one I just evened out and measured, right? Against that frame. And what I do then is I grab this comforter, kind of just just a handful of it, and I spread it across so that I can get this middle part section pulled over, straightened out, so get all the wrinkles out of the middle there. As I do that, I'm holding the edge of the comforter with my right hand. With my left hand, I'm just smoothing out, smoothing out that bedscript bedsprit across the mattress. Next thing I do from there is I will then make sure that this side of the mattress, now I'm on Brenda's side, make sure that the comfort there, comforter there, is also lined up with that frame in the bottom. And it is so great. So now I can come back to the foot of the bed, reach across, kind of reach across the mattress up top as far as I can. I'm a short guy with short arms, just to make sure again that I did get all that cleared and all the wrinkles out. Next thing we do, I come up to my side of the bed, which is

Smoothing Wrinkles Across The Middle

SPEAKER_00 4:55

the left side if you're facing it from the foot of the bed. Brenda likes to have the little fold thingy, like the comforter spread over. I don't know, just a little bit of fold in the top of it. So to make it look all cute and neat or whatever, she likes it. So that's what we're gonna do. How I measure that is I've already stacked these pillows up against the edge, up against the top where the wall is at, the head of the bed. Having done that, I know that that's where I want this fold to start. The next thing I do to make sure it's even on both sides is I will take my hand and I'll put it on the comforter on the edge, and I'll measure one hand, two, three, four. Oh man, that's five full hands on this fold. Okay, so now I walk back around. I measured out how how much of that is folded over, and five of my hands, your hands are gonna be a different size. I do the same thing on this other side on Brenda's side. Do the same thing, put my hand up on top of the mattress on the comforter where it's folded. I measure one, two, three, four, and five. And there's a little bit extra there on that side. That's okay, it doesn't have to be perfect. Brennan

Measuring The Top Fold By Hand

SPEAKER_00 6:12

doesn't expect me to be perfect. I don't expect me to be perfect. You know what? Side note, Jesus doesn't even expect you to be perfect. He knows we're not. That's why we need Jesus, because we're not perfect. Anyway, that's just a quick side note. So that fold, you see that that's on there, it's measured out. If you can see it and it looks a little off, that's okay. It is measured out as good as I could do, and all I ever really want to do is the best I possibly can. So I'm working, I'm trying, I'm doing the best I can, but it's not ever gonna be perfect, it's not gonna be as good as what Berta does because Britain is just amazing. This last thing I do because my lovely wife likes all the pillows, and because we take these extra pillows that

Pillows Placement And Centering

SPEAKER_00 7:03

we don't even use, guys. You know what I'm talking about. Pillows that go on the bed that you don't really need, you don't really use, they wind up on the floor when you're when it's bedtime. Whatever, that's fine. Putting the pillows back on there again, guys. If you're blind, it's super easy. You just line it up with the same ones you used before that are lined up on the wall. Put those just right in front of the other pillows. Now we have all four. Now Brenda takes it a step further. Some of you ladies can probably relate. We've actually got five pillows that go on the bed. This one is a longer one, kind of a middle pillow. It just goes right in front of the other two extra pillows. Put it down there, center it as much as we can. Again, kind of measure it with my hands. That's about center, and that concludes how we make the bed blind.

DVR Classes Independence And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_00 8:00

If you're blind and you can get to your DVR, call your D VR department, and they can get you into some classes to teach you how to do stuff like this. I didn't have that opportunity, but basically, it was gonna I was gonna lose six months out of my life, and I'm married with kids, so I didn't really want to do that. So instead, I opted to just pick up some of the stuff that I knew how to do and figure it out, right? So these were my tips for the day. Make it the bed. Hope you enjoyed it.