When I think of laundry now, I think of my friend Duryan.

I actually think of my friend Duryan in relation to a lot of things. She was my BFF in college, and she was one of those magnetic people who was probably everyone’s BFF all the time. She died in 2021, and I miss her a lot.

But I think of her in relation to laundry now because when she died, it was the height of COVID. So instead of a regular shiva, it was via Zoom and everyone sort of went around talking about all the lovely and hilarious things she did, and one story that got a lot of echoes was how she taught myriad people to fold a fitted sheet.

I laughed, because she most assuredly did not teach me that. When we were roommates, we didn’t fold sheets at all. We washed them and put them right back on the bed. And when we moved out, we rolled them up into the tightest balls we possibly could so they took up as little space as possible in the moving box/trunk/suitcase. I have a polaroid of her sitting next to a steamer trunk with fabric spilling out trying to make it all fit. Not a stitch is folded. Somewhere between USC and Brooklyn, she picked up the skill, though.

I learned how to fold fitted sheets from Martha Stewart’s magazine, and I suspect that’s where she learned, too, but I can’t swear to it. I’m pretty sure her mother, like mine, graduated from the school of “those things can’t be folded, don’t waste my time.” I can’t speak for Duryan’s grandmother, but I know mine used to iron bedsheets and was always faintly horrified when she would watch my mom pull a sheet down from the clothesline in something vaguely resembling straight lines, then wad it up the rest of the way and toss it in the basket. I know my grandmother expressed genuine surprise when she watched me fold a fitted sheet the “right” way, demanding to know who taught me.

To this day, I fold the sheets in our house. My husband puts away literally everything else, but those sit on the guest room bed for eons, waiting for me to get around to them.

How do you feel about fitted sheets? Fluff or fold?