Key Takeaways
- Making your bed daily may reduce stress, improve sleep, and boost your sense of accomplishment.
- A messy home is linked to poorer mental health, so tidying up—like making the bed—could help.
- To build the habit, set reminders, keep it simple, and tie it to a regular morning routine.
Some swear by making the bed, while others couldn’t care less. It’s a daily habit that not only helps set the tone for the day but may even have positive effects on mental health, including promoting a calmer outlook, restful routines, and reduced stress.
Others argue that an unmade bed is better for creativity and hygiene. The choice is up to you, but there are things you can do so that making your bed each day becomes a more regular habit.
Why Making the Bed Can Be Good for Your Mental Health
While the scientific research on the impact of making your bed is slim, a wealth of anecdotal evidence points to substantial mental health benefits of this daily practice. These potential advantages include:
While many of these possible benefits are based on popular wisdom, there is some evidence from various studies to help support these claims.
While there isn’t much research specifically studying the effects of making your bed, there is a solid body of evidence showing a clear link between living and working in an organized, clutter-free environment and having improved focus, goal-setting skills, productivity, and lower levels of stress. In essence, the assumption is that a tidy house (or workspace) makes for a tidy mind.
- Better executive function: Those with messier homes, especially to the extreme of hoarding, are known to have poorer executive function and more issues with emotional regulation, stress, and mental health.
- Better information processing: Studies show that clutter impairs information processing. This finding becomes relevant if we assume that those who live in a more clutter-filled environment are also less likely to make the bed.
- Improved brain function: Interestingly, studies show that, particularly for older people, living in a tidy environment improves or retains brain function and enhances general quality of life. Researchers also contend that the opposite is true—that having a messy living space can negatively affect a person’s well-being. It’s not a big leap to extend this thinking to the impact of making your bed.
- Better impulse control: According to another study on personal and household hygiene, people who are more tidy and organized tend to have better impulse control and are more conscientious, orderly, and goal-oriented. Those who cleaned up also paid more attention to manners and following social norms—and were most often women who made their tidying consistent by including it in their daily routine.
There is also evidence that physical environments (and their relative orderliness) impact our ability to learn and interact with others and our general sense of well-being. Researchers have found that disorganization negatively influences our brains, such as our ability to focus.
Why Should You Make the Bed?
It Sets Your Intentions for the Day
Some people think making the bed is a waste of time—after all, you just crawl back in each night! However, for many, making the bed each morning is far more than a chore or about simply keeping your room neat.
Instead, it’s a way to begin the morning in an organized manner and with a clean slate that helps to make the most of your day.
Making the bed is about setting an intention to do the little things that bring about an orderly, thoughtful, responsible, balanced, or successful life. In addition to providing a quick sense of daily accomplishment, some people find making the bed calming as well.
It Can Help Improve Your Sleep
Another big reason to make the bed may be that it helps you sleep better at night. As around 40 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders and millions more experience less than adequate sleep, the merits of making the bed may not just be a matter of aesthetics, but one of public health.
Poor sleep is also directly linked to poorer health outcomes, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and even death. Research shows sleep deprivation also negatively impacts mood and the ability to problem-solve, think, and react quickly and creatively. So, if making the bed might improve sleep, there are lots of good health reasons it’s worth trying.
Just as a straightened bed seems to be a powerful signal (for some, at least) that it’s time to start your day, a made bed may be more pleasant to slip into at bedtime.
Studies show that the sleep environment plays a vital role in sleep and that poor “sleep hygiene” can harm a person’s sleep.
Sleep hygiene includes anything that might be distracting to a sleeper, such as noise, light, stress, and mess. So, a cluttered bedroom and an undone bed could be hindering your sleep. To this end, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends eliminating any potential distractions from your bedroom to enhance sleep.
Even more compelling, studies show that those who make their bed are more likely to report getting the rest they need.
It Helps Support Daily Rituals
Does a streamlined bed really do more than just tidy up—and make your parents proud? Many people believe it does, including William H. McRaven, retired Navy four-star admiral and former chancellor of The University of Texas System. McRaven even wrote a book about the key mental health benefits of this ritual called “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… And Maybe the World.”
In the book, published in 2017, McRaven extols the idea that making your bed in the morning sets you up for success. His theory is that just by making your bed, you’ve accomplished at least that one thing. So, tidying up your covers lets you begin your morning with a small success that, the theory goes, will encourage many more throughout the day.
Other possible advantages of carving out a few extra minutes in your morning routine for this daily ritual may include better sleep, less stress, and a clearer, calmer outlook.
Are There Any Downsides to Making the Bed?
While there seem to be many potential benefits, are there any possible negatives to making the bed? Some people associate an unmade bed with a freer spirit, suggesting a possible link to creativity—and one study claims a made bed is less hygienic.
It Might Hamper Creativity
Studies have shown that a messier desk may be correlated to enhanced creative thinking—maybe the same is true for keeping the bed undone. The flip side is that researchers also found that those with a tidy desk (which may relate to a tidy bed) made healthier choices and were more prone toward convention, tradition, and generosity.
Interestingly, these effects were created simply by bringing a person into the room with the messy or clean desk. So, the assumption is that by simply leaving your environment messy, you may get more of your creative juices flowing, while straightening up may lead to more focus, orderly thinking.
It May Be Less Hygienic
One older study contends that a made bed is more likely to breed germs, while an unmade bed discourages them by letting air and sun stifle an otherwise potentially dark, damp breeding ground. While the study feels a bit tongue-in-cheek, its authors call making the bed an “unprecedented health risk.”
It is true that people sweat quite a bit while they sleep, as well as shed skin cells, both of which account for the potential “breeding ground” environment of the bed mentioned in the study. However, a simple solution may be to simply change the sheets a bit more often.
How Many People Make Their Bed Every Day?
Studies show that more people make their bed than don’t.
In fact, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s Bedroom Poll, around 71% of Americans make their bed each morning or almost every morning. Nearly half of respondents in the study also turn their covers down before slipping into bed at night.
Researchers also found details about the type of people who are more likely to make the bed each morning. For example, those living in the West and Midwest are least likely to make their beds, while those who reside in the South and Northeast are more inclined to take on this daily task. Those on the East Coast do so at a rate of around 80%.
Age and lifestyle factors also seem to influence whether you ascribe to this bedroom ritual. The poll found that those over 40 and those living with romantic partners (married or not) are more likely to tidy up the bed before moving on with their day.
To Make or Not to Make
Ultimately, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t make your bed, and it’s unlikely to radically change your life if you do. However, as reviewed above, there do seem to be discernible benefits for many people who choose to adopt this morning ritual, particularly in the realms of mental health, productivity, and sleep habits.
However, if you suspect that a messier bed or room may be more conducive to your creative endeavors (or if you simply want to test if you notice any difference in how you feel with an unmade bed), then it might be worthwhile to skip making your bed for a particular time.
One possibility is to keep a journal that tracks how you feel after either making or not making your bed over a period of a few weeks. Then, once you review this information, you can decide if the morning habit is right for you. You can always switch back to either method.
Tips for Making Your Bed
If you want to institute bed-making into your morning, it’s more likely to become a daily habit if you incorporate it into your routine. It may take more conscious effort at the start, but after you reliably make it for a week or two, it will likely become reflexive, like buckling a seatbelt or brushing your teeth.
Studies show that having reliable routines is key to many aspects of life, including physical and mental health. Building a habit like bed-making into your day can help to establish a healthy schedule, the benefits of which may spill over into many aspects of life, such as executive function, emotional regulation, productivity, and sleep—in other words, many of the potential benefits noted above.
- Link the activity to something you already do. So if you always brush your teeth each morning, try following that with making your bed.
- Aim to do it right then—it only takes a minute. If you put it off, thinking you’ll come back later, you may easily forget. You may be tempted to skip it because you’re likely to be tired and/or in a rush.
- Post a note or set a reminder on your phone. This can be helpful if you tend to forget.
- Keep yourself accountable by working with your partner, if you have one, other family members, or roommates. Strategies include switching off each morning or assigning one person to take on this task and having the other person take on a related task, such as changing the sheets once a week. Another option would be to make the bed together or to have whoever gets out last be in charge of tidying up the bed.
- Remember that the process can be as simple as pulling up the covers. Keeping it as simple as possible makes it easier to keep up with each day.
