I know that there are probably many amazing incredible, well put-together moms out there who look at this title and think “well, duh, of course you always make the bed”, but I suppose this post is for those of us who do not possess magical powers. As moms, we have many tasks that we need to fit into the space of 24 hours (theoretically including at least some sleep), so it is inevitable that some things are going to fall by the wayside, right? After getting home from work and chasing my very loud and exuberant and sometimes (to be frank) insane children around for an hour or two, that moment when they hit the bed and the house goes quiet just doesn’t stimulate my brain to scream “let’s clean the house!”. I mean, I do look around at the scattered dirty dinner dishes, the various toy pieces that litter the floor, the gob of gum that appeared stuck to a random door knob, and maybe some crayon drawings that have become our new living room mural, all of which somehow appeared in the span of an hour, and I think about how all of that should be clean, how I really should take a few minutes and sweep the floor. I even generally muster the will to put those dishes in the dishwasher, simply because I know it will only be more disgusting tomorrow if I don’t. But when I’m done with that, I really just want to go to bed, read a book, decompress. For many of those things, it becomes a promise to do it tomorrow morning.
Of course, tomorrow morning rolls around and I hit the alarm clock three times, search the house frantically for the purple socks my 3yo wants as well as the obscure skirt that’s just like all the other skirts but somehow isn’t for my 7yo. In the span of an hour, I need to yank the poor kids out of bed in the dark of the morning, convince them that it really IS fun to put on clothes and go to school at this hour, all the while finding something presentable to wear to work while I swipe a little mascara on. No time to pluck off gum gobs, wipe down walls, or sweep floors. If I have 10 minutes, I can either tidy the kids’ rooms to teach them about keeping things clean, or I can tidy my own. Of course, I choose to tidy the kids’ rooms, and mine starts to look like you’ve taken a time machine and traveled back to Hiroshima. And if you’re exhausted enough after another long day, falling into tangled sheets doesn’t seem like much of a thing.
Except then I came across a news article in Psychology Today from 2012 called “Make your Bed, Change your life?”. Apparently, based on a survey of 68,000 people conducted by Hunch.com, bed makers are more likely to be happy and like their jobs than their non-bed-making counterparts. Heck, who doesn’t want to change their lives and be even happier right? So, I made my bed that day and my whole life changed! The sun started shining, I suddenly had so much energy that I skipped into work, and I started singing songs to the kids like I was suddenly the new new Mary Poppins. Ok, I’m kidding. No, that didn’t happen. I made the bed, dragged my kids to school like usual, and forgot about the bed completely the second I got in the car. I wasn’t terribly surprised given that Hunch.com is not a scientific source (in fact, you can’t even find that original source if you look for it), and since any chance you might potentially see would take more than one day of making the bed.
Still, a few nights later, when I finished the usual insanity and the kids were asleep, I laid down on a clean, orderly bed and felt…nice. I relaxed more quickly, I slept better, and I noticed the next morning that I was humming while I gathered the kids for school. My good mood was catching, and even the kids seemed more upbeat, got dressed more readily, and very nearly skipped off to school. Now I’ll admit that we have since had mornings where we dealt with tantrums, or lost pieces of homework, some dog vomit, so the day of skipping did not exactly lead to a skipping routine every day, but overall, I do feel like the days start out happier since I’ve started making the bed. Can this really be true? Can the 1-minute task of making a bed really generate happiness? If so, how?
Well, when you make your bed, your bedroom feels cleaner, so perhaps cleanliness of the bedroom impacts sleep quality? Or maybe it’s more of a psychological phenomenon. Perhaps the knowledge that we made the bed makes us feel accomplished in some way? Or, maybe we’re happier simply because we know that we did that one thing for ourselves when so much of our lives is about taking care of others? What does the science say?
Does a clean bedroom lead to better sleep?
At this point, it is well-known that several aspects of the sleeping environment can impact how fast we fall asleep and the quality of our sleep through the night. Most of this work has focused on the temperature of the bedroom, the surrounding noise levels, the amount and type of light in the room, and the bedroom ventilation, all of which do seem to impact our sleep quality. It turns out, though, that actual peer-reviewed scientific studies addressing the effects of bedroom cleanliness on sleep are sparce, if not non-existent. The National Sleep Foundation did conduct a survey exploring what Americans consider to be key elements of their bedrooms, and how those elements impact sleep quality. This study was not reviewed by scientists, but the data are presented clearly and allow for a critical analysis. For this study, a total of 1500 telephone interviews were conducted, and responders indicated that the scent of the sheets have an impact on sleep quality – 77% of people indicated that they sleep more comfortably when their sheets have a fresh scent. Approximately 71% of individuals reported that they make their beds every day or almost every day, and of those, 44% report that they get a good night’s sleep every day or almost every day, compared to 37% of those that do not make the bed frequently. I used their number total of 1500 respondents and calculated the actual numbers of reports in each group based on the stated percentages, and using a simple statistical test, I was able to confirm that this does represent a statistically significant difference in the proportion of individuals that report good sleep between bed-makers and non-bed-makers, though the difference in the percentages is small. Overall, about 66% of responders rated a clean bedroom as an important element for getting a good night sleep.
Does this mean that science supports the idea that a clean bedroom leads to better sleep? Well, a survey like this has its limitations. Our perceptions of how we sleep don’t always match up to how we actually sleep. A night or two of using a Fitbit or other sleep monitoring device will often tell you that while you felt like you slept well and for a long time, you may actually be experiencing night restlessness that you don’t remember the next morning. Sleep quality depends on several parameters, including how long it took to get to sleep and how long we spend in the deep sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) stages of sleep, and you need a sleep lab or at the very least a sleep monitor to truly measure these things. But whether or not a made bed is truly giving you a higher sleep quality, if we feel like it is, that clearly has psychological impacts in any case, doesn’t’ it?
So ARE there psychological benefits of making the bed?
When you’re a busy mom facing a daunting wall of tasks, ticking even one off the list brings with it a sense of pride, and this can be even more pronounced when it’s a task that you didn’t previously expect to get done. Our sense of pride is built when we are young, when we are taught that doing something good brings with it a reward. This sets up a neurological circuit in our brains that teaches us to feel good about doing the positive tasks, and anticipate the rewards that come from them. When facing a task that we have previously received a reward for, our brains start to produce dopamine, which is a feel-good hormone. You start to feel good about doing the task even before you do it, and that effect lasts through and after the task. If you were told as a young child that it is “good” to make your bed, and received even the smallest amount of praise when you did it, then the simple attempt to make your bed now likely triggers the release of the feel-good hormone, and the elevation of your mood.
Completion of even a small task, like making the bed, can also decrease our anxiety levels, leading to a greater sense of well-being. A Russian psychologist named Dr. Bluma Zeigarnik conducted a ground-breaking study where he showed that our minds tend to linger on tasks that we have not yet completed, and once the tasks are completed, our minds are allowed to move on to other tasks. This is now called the ‘Zeigarnik Effect’, and it explains why to-do lists work so well. As you complete even small tasks, your mind is released from thinking about those tasks in the background. Our mommy minds are constantly cluttered with all of the tasks that we need to get done. Even if you decide that making the bed is not one of the most important tasks in your day, it still remains as an unfinished task in your mind. Devoting a minute or two to pulling up those bed sheets frees your mind from just one more thing it has to think about.
Finally, clutter in the home can trigger anxiety. Take a look at the pictures below. Which makes you feel more peaceful?
If you said the made bed, a scientific study backs you up. This study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology bulletin, tested whether a person’s perception of his or her home influences levels of stress and overall happiness. Individuals that described their homes using words that indicate clutter or disorder had patterns of the stress hormone, cortisol, that were indicative of chronic stress. Those individuals were also more likely to report more depressed moods across the day, greater fatique in the evening, and a more difficult transition from work to home.
What’s the take-home?
While there are no actual scientific studies that have tested whether making the bed improves your psyche and leads to a better day, there are enough reasons to believe that such a simple task just might be able to have a good impact on how you feel and how you sleep. It may be that no one else of any importance will actually get to see your bedroom, but a nicely made bed might just make you happier. And let’s face it, a happier, well-rested mom is a better mom, so I’m going to take a minute or two to pull those bed covers up each day, and maybe even tidy up the room, just in case.
Contributing References:
Psychology Today Post – Make your Bed, Change your Life?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-candy/201208/make-your-bed-change-your-life
National Sleep Foundation Study
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/NSF_Bedroom_Poll_Report.pdf
Takahashi, H., Matsuura, M., Koeda, M., Yahata, N., Suhara, T., Kato, M., & Okubo, Y. (2007). Brain activations during judgments of positive self-conscious emotion and positive basic emotion: pride and joy. Cerebral cortex, 18(4), 898-903.
Swain, J. E., Tasgin, E., Mayes, L. C., Feldman, R., Todd Constable, R., & Leckman, J. F. (2008). Maternal brain response to own baby‐cry is affected by cesarean section delivery. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 49(10), 1042-1052.
Burke, W. W. (2011). A perspective on the field of organization development and change: The Zeigarnik effect. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(2), 143-167.
Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Unfulfilled goals interfere with tasks that require executive functions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(2), 300-311.
Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275(5306), 1593-1599.
