Don’t Make Your Bed Day Date in the current year: December 21, 2024

Making their own bed is one of the first chores that young children are taught. Making your bed doesn’t just helps to make your bedroom look less messy; scientists say that it has a number of mental health benefits. The ritual of making the bed can help us to wake up and start our day off right, makes us more organized, discourages procrastination, and improves our overall mood.

However, not all people find the routine of making their bed every morning pleasant for various reasons. Some would rather sleep for five more minutes. Some simply don’t enjoy the chore. Some find it pointless: why make the bed in the morning if you’re just going to come home in the evening and get in the bed in a couple of hours? Some people don’t actually mind making their bed most days but are not in the mood for it every now and then. There’s nothing wrong with not making your bed as long as you yourself are okay with it.

The origins of many fun holidays are unclear, but Don’t Make Your Bed Day isn’t one of them. It was created in 2014 by Shannon Barba, a fifth-grader from Tijeras, New Mexico. Barba wrote a petition to Congress in which he told that he had made his bed every day since he was 4 years old to make his parents proud but sometimes he got too tired of making his bed. He assumed that adults could get tired of making their beds too so it would be nice to have a National Don’t Make Your Bed Day.

Barba suggested that Don’t Make Your Bed Day be celebrated on December 21 because it is usually the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that we spend the least amount of time out of bed on that day and so it would be nice to leave it unmade.

Sadly, Congress didn’t end up passing a bill designating December 21 as Don’t Make Your Bed Day, but it doesn’t stop people across the nation from celebrating the holiday informally because it’s nice to have one day in the year when you leave your bed unmade and don’t feel bad about it. By the way, not making your bed has a number of benefits. Leaving your bed unmade exposes the bedding to air and sunlight, which helps eliminate dust mites that thrive in warm and dark environments. Besides, airing your sheets out extends their lifespan.

Don’t Make Your Bed Day isn’t just about not making your bed; it’s about giving yourself a break and reevaluating some things in your life. Try not doing some things that are a part of your morning routine and see what happens. You might discover that it is possible to survive without caffeine in the morning, or that the world won’t end if you don’t do your makeup and look less than perfect. Now, we don’t mean that you should stop drinking coffee or wearing makeup altogether, but it’s nice to allow yourself to make a detour from your routine every now and then.