Fluff and Fold

I know I've spoken of my mom's insane ironing penchant...ironing everything from bed sheets to dad's undershirts and shorts.  I think socks were one of the few things that escaped ironing.  They did however have a proper way of being folded.

Another habit my mother had that always amazed me was folding the towels and sheets in just such a way.  She told me once, when I asked why, that you never knew when someone would look in the closet so you wanted everything to look proper.  This must have been something she picked up long ago when she was raised by her grandmother who had grown up in the Victorian era.  Grandma (actually my Great Grandmother) was born in 1865!  Anyway, aside from being ironed, sheets and pillowcases were folded in a special way.

The towels had a similar set of folding rules.  No haphazard folding in half and half again then calling it a day.  No, first you folded them in 3’s lengthwise, then in half horizontally and again in half horizontally.  They were stacked with the curved fold showing, not the tail ends.  My mother was very pleased when everything lined up just perfectly in the linen closet.  These days, I fold in whatever way allows me to get the most in the small space of this rental and since I never “entertain”, I really don’t care how the closet looks.  Currently my value is on space or lack thereof and not “the view”.

Thinking back, I do have to say that opening the linen closet at my mom's home was always a pleasure.  The smell of freshly ironed linen...so pleasant...there's nothing like it!  And though I'm not about to start ironing bed linens, there was something quite wonderful about sliding into a bed just made with ironed sheets.  In the time before Egyptian cotton and zillion thread counts, ironing really tamed cotton.