Let's talk about hobbies
No sports gear involved
Do you have a hobby, Maggie?
Yes.
Folding Fitted Sheets.
I’ve been obsessed with this fun household activity ever since I stumbled upon Melissa Pateras @melissadilkespateras on TikTok.
This marvellous Canadian wife and mother (and lesbian) is so funny and it was her brilliant instructions that finally enabled me to pack my sheets into neat little squares that pile up so nicely in my linen cupboard with their siblings, the flat sheets and their cousins, the duvet covers.
It was lifechanging.
She says: “Think of the top two corners as the lesbians and the bottom corners as the straight married ladies. All you do is put the lesbians into the married ladies.
It works perfectly. There are a few more manoeuvres, but that’s the key trick. It’s all about creating a neat oblong you can then origami into a perfect little square, or rectangle, depending on your sheet-storing preferences. #teamsquare
All her posts are funny and practical – and the comments underneath them almost as good. She occupies that special sub-sector of lesbians, Canadian Lesbians Who are Deeply Attractive to Straight Women.
Her and KD Laing run it together.
But beyond her sex appeal, Melissa has sorted my linen cupboard.
A scrambled egg pile of sheet used to make me very unhappy – although I’m a Leo, I have seven planets in Virgo, so this kind of nonsense matters deeply to me. Now I can’t wait to do the laundry so I get to fold my fitteds.
I have offered to go round to people’s houses to do theirs. It’s that satisfying.
It’s funny how I love her feed and #laundrytok posts in general, but all those videos of women with long fake nails storing their food in endless plastic containers bring me out in hives.
I mean, I do have a cheese box in my fridge to keep it one place and another for Sauces, Pickles and Condiments, but stuff like rice and oats gets put in empty glass jars.
I like the higgledy piggedly arrangements of them on my open shelves. It feels like real life. Not some kind of replicant housekeeping like the fake-nail people.
Their Snack Drawers, with endless packets of ultra-processed food in single-use plastic, in perfect rows and stacks, make me feel very unwell.
That’s why I love KAMI, on TikTok whose entire feeds is dedicated to studying such videos and what they mean.
I would give you a link to one of his classics, but I’m writing this on my phone and it’s a bit of a fandangle embedding TikToks on it, so do a search.
‘How Not To Look Like a Povvo’ will find him.
What are you hobbies?
Those reels of rich people transferring all of their over packaged groceries into clear plastic bottles and containers enrage me. I love Shabaz's reaction videos. (I refuse to Tik Tok)
I learnt fitted sheets folding from the Original Queen, Martha Stewart….
Also, call me anal but I have to have everything in my airing cupboard (but as I’m Irish it’s actually called a hot press ☺️) with the folded side out, so you can’t see edges! You only have to organise it once, then just keep putting everything in the right way….