Loose Ends
Picking out sheets
Susan Nienow

How hard is it to pick out a set of sheets that fits my bed, washes and dries easily and doesn't require ironing? Beyond my capabilities.

Just today when I made the bed, I had to tuck an extra two feet of the fitted sheet around the edges. That's one foot on each side - which makes it four feet. The math thing always trips me up.

The sheets are the right ones for my bed - sort of. The small print said it was for an extra deep mattress. But I had already bought the set, and have you ever tried to fold a sheet so it will fit back into the package? So I kept them. They were all cotton supposed to shrink.

The top sheet is big enough to rent out as a canopy for a wedding reception. The nightly "give me my share of the sheet" has changed to "here, take some more."

Hunting for sheets doesn't just end at getting the right size. Now I have to consider thread count and the nationality of the cotton. I have never taken the time to count the threads in my sheets - mostly I take their word for it.

We are now in the middle of the thread count wars. It used to take 200 threads to make a sheet feel luxurious. Now sheets with just 300 are pikers. So far, the winner is 1,000.

But just being cotton doesn't count anymore. It has to be the finest Egyptian cotton. Does that mean that Egyptian cotton sheets with a 300 thread count outrank those cotton sheets of unknown national heritage with 600 threads? And is it threads to the inch or to the centimeter?

The sheets I bought before I invested in the canopy lasted three years before someone put a foot through the top sheet. You just can't trust sheets anymore.

After looking at all of the choices, I have resorted to trusting the packaging. I pick the sheets with the most threads, the best adjective describing the cotton, and, of course, the cost. I ended up with 450 threads of the finest Egyptian cotton. And they only come in solid colors. Forget dramatic dahlias or dainty daisies.

On to buying cute salad plates. After agonizing over the wavy edges in ocean blues and greens and the square ones in cinnamon and bronze, I bought four. I crowed over my buy - they were on sale - to my other half who turned them over and read: "Do not use for food. May poison the food."

Poison the food? I had bought candle plates.

What do they put in those plates anyway? Should I wear gloves when handling?

I can't buy napkins, either. One set needs industrial strength ironing. One looks like a waffle. Same color, too. Another set isn't anywhere close to being square. Another bleeds red dye when wet - not good for white tablecloths or guests with white pants.

Aghhh!