Saturday, October 3, 2020

Making the Bed from one side only

 For some of us making the bed, specifically changing the sheets is impossible. I can pull everything off the mattress. But I cannot get it back on.

I decided to solve that problem. With the coronavirus, I want to limit my exposure so I don't want people coming into the bus. I'll gladly visit outside at a 6 foot distance.

After a lot of thought and design revisions here is what I plan to change my sheets.

BUILT IN

The design requires eye bolts at regular intervals on 3 sides of the bed (the 4th side is open to me). Since the base of the bed is plywood, I have a solid surface for the long side. On the short sides I don't have access to the base because the mattress is up against the walls so I put the eye bolts just below the height of the mattress. 

The other materials are strong thin rope. I am using paracord with different colors on the long and short sides. I placed carabiner's (like the ones you put on your keys but a bit stronger) along the paracord between the eye bolts. I do not lock them in place because I want to be able to move  them as needed.

The "Long Side Taut" drawing shows the red paracord rope going THROUGH the 4 eyebolts on the long side of the bed. But it goes AROUND the eye bolts on the short sides of the bed.

"Short Side Taut" shows the green paracord rope going through the eye bolts on the short end of the bed.

After the paracord rope was threaded through the eye bolts, I added carabiners between each eye bolt. The carabiners are shown as black rectangles. 


CHANGING THE SHEETS

In this drawing I am using the long side and the left short side to hold the blue sheet. This means that my head is going to lay on the right short side. On a skoolie (converted school bus) it's necessary to be able to sleep with my head at either end.


I can make both the long and short sides loose by releasing the tension on them. Then I can pull the sheet all the way across the bed to the open long side.

To prevent ripping the sheets, I bought king size sheets for my queen size bed. Then I folded over the edge on the long side and one short side. I inserted a piece of duck cotton for added strength. Then I sewed button holes where I want the carabiners to be attached. 

I decided not to use grommets for 2 reasons. I don't want anything metal near my body when the air is cold. And even though they are small, I didn't want to roll over and have cold metal waking me up. I also didn't want the noise of metal grommets against the metal carabiner. 

When I want to put the sheet back in place, I just tighten the paracord -- long side first then the short side.

I plan to use the carabiners to attach the mattress pad, bottom sheet, top sheet and duvet cover. I will use all the carabiners for the mattress pad and bottom sheet but only a few carabiners for the top sheet and, when needed, duvet cover.

Fingers are crossed that this will work as well as I planned.


3 comments:

  1. This is very exciting, and I can’t wait to hear how it works out for you! 🀞🏽🀞🏽🀞🏽

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't get my sheets back on either, and this is a crip engineering solution that I can try, not on a bus!

    ReplyDelete

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