Do you find it annoying and time-consuming to change your bedsheets? Shockingly, a simple solution has been staring us in the face for over a hundred years!

Background:

The ability to clean bedsheets is what separates humans from the animals. But removing, washing, and replacing bedsheets is a hassle. Who has time for it in this modern world!?

If only there were some way to replace the sheets on a bed without all the work!

Proposal:

Shockingly, a technology that almost solves our problem completely has been available for decades in doctor’s offices: the roll of white paper that covers an exam table.

All we need to do is replace the paper with a giant spool of bed-suitable linen (Figure 1), and we’ve got an “infinitely” replaceable bottom sheet! To change the sheets from “used” to “fresh,” we just spool out another ~8 feet of clean sheets, and we’re good to go.

Fig. 1: The purple sheet can be “changed” without removing it from the bed: we just turn the axle at the foot of the bed. The used sheet will roll up into the bottom spool, and fresh clean sheets will un-spool from the giant roll just above the pillows.

Addendum for the Top Sheet:

You may say, well, this works for the bottom sheet (A.K.A. “fitted” sheet), but what about the “normal” top sheet?

Well, for the top sheet, we’d just place a second roll of sheets perpendicular to the first one, creating two “scrolls” of sheets arranged in a cross shape. (The horizontal “scroll” would be the top sheet.) Easy!

PROS: Saves lots of time that would otherwise be wasted with tucking and un-tucking bedsheets.

CONS: It’s not totally clear how you would launder the giant and incredibly heavy roll of spooled-up bedsheets once they were completely used up. Maybe you could exchange a roll for a fresh one at some kind of specialized “sheet roll cleaning center” (like a dry cleaner, but even more specialized).

Originally published 2025-04-28.