Bunk Beds; Evil or Ingenious?

There are few things in this world that I hate (yes I really mean hate) more than making my daughters bunk beds. Seriously, I will wait for the sheets to take themselves off and walk to the washer rather than strip the beds myself. The unfortunate thing about this is that sometimes means I allow Emma and Lili's sheets to wait far longer than the normal 5-7 day washing cycle. I refuse to say exactly how long I have been known to allow them to go between washings for fear of backlash from friends and family. I have always, however, allowed and encouraged anyone in the family to feel free to wash sheets at their own discretion. I can count on one hand the amount of times that has ever happened. Actually I don't even need my hand, it has NEVER happened.

The thing about bunk beds is that they aren't meant to be made by a normal human being. Obviously some contortionist came up with them. Besides the fact that I am not 8 feet tall ,(the height required to make the top bunk without climbing on top of something) I have yet to see bunk beds that aren't shoved up against a wall. So not only do you need to be 8 feet tall, but elastic arms are a must. (Can you say Mrs.Incredible?) So for any non-super human mom, making the top bunk, goes a lot like this:
"Mom, my sheets have crawled off my bed again and are begging to be washed!"
"FINE! It's only been a month since they were washed, they can't possibly be that dirty, but I'll take care of it." (I am NOT admitting to the I have ever let the girls sheets go a month, this is for explanation purposes only)
So I wade through the sea of stuffed animals. This is totally off topic, but you will never convince me that stuffed animals cannot, somehow reproduce.

Back to the beds, so I wade through the 5 million stuffed animals and collect the sheets. So far so good, getting bedding off of the beds is the really easy part of this whole endeavor.
Fast forward several hours: the laundry is finally done, 4 loads of laundry later, and I am ready to tackle the re-making of the beds.

Now here's the tricky part, which bed to tackle first? Do I go the easy route and do the bottom bunk first? Or should I just get the pain in the you-know-what top bunk done. I'm going up, top bunk it is. Realistically, the amount of physical contorting and throwing myself around that it involves usually tears the bottom bunk apart anyhow. So here I go, someone cue the circus music...First, the mattress pad. Things are REALLY bad when I have to wash this. I swear the elastic on this thing is somehow connected to a magnetic field in the center of Emma's mattress causing it to prefer to heap in the middle of her bed. So I get one corner on with only minor swearing, one down, three to go. Logically, I move to the next closest corner, so while balancing on a ladder that I am certain is not approved for someone of my weight, I carefully lift the far corner of the mattress up and quickly stretch the mattress pad over it. Two down. Now here is where it all goes horribly wrong.

Somewhere between the second corner and me leaping from the ladder to the nightstand at the head of the bed (for some reason I turn into a 2 year old whenever I make this bed and the floor is hot lava), the bottom two corners have come off. WHAT THE HE**?! Okay, new plan, I'll hook the top corners, then jump back to the ladder(the floor is still hot lava) and re-hook the bottom corners. You can probably imagine how this looks to anyone that might be passing by our home. Some crazy lady (me) jumping from a bunk bed ladder to a night stand while alternately talking and swearing to herself. Not a pretty picture.

So after lots of colorful language, and jumping I get the mattress pad on. Now the bottom sheet. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Here I go. Again with the jumping, (the hot lava doesn't go away until I am done with the bed, DUH!) , and the swearing, but by now I have worked up quite a sweat. This is what I am referring to whenever I check the "moderate to heavy exercise" box on the questionnaire at the Dr's office. A good 20-30 minutes later, I have the bottom half of the top bunk done and I need a break. So I sit down on the nightstand(yep, there is still hot lava) and try to slow down my heart rate, hey I only need 30 minutes of cardio, right? Now here is where I have streamlined the bed making process. The Europeans have it right, who needs a top sheet? Emma has always wanted to visit Paris, so if I eliminate the top sheet, she can pretend she is in a lovely villa in Paris. No need to mention that it saves me wrestling another freaking sheet onto her bed. So bedspread it is,(or shall I say Duvet?) and I'm almost done!

It is now time to brave the hot lava and put pillow cases on, a fairly easy task after the mattress wrestling I have just finished.
I am in the home stretch, I throw Emma's pillow's up and call it done. Lili's bed looks like a piece of cake compared to what I just endured. So unless you can count hitting my head a couple dozen times, Lili's bed gets made without incident and in record time. I triumphantly exit their room through a sea of stuffed creatures that I refuse to replace, mostly because I have no idea which animals go where, and move onto the next household task knowing Emma and Lili have clean sheets for another month, oh I mean, week.