It’s not rocket surgery.
Stand up with the sheet.
Place your hands inside two adjacent corners so the elastic is at your wrists.
Bring your hands together, folding the sheet in half, and flip one corner over the other hand so that one is tucked in the other.
With your free hand, reach down and gather the other two ends which are not tucked.
Let go of the tucked corners, which will slip apart again.
Curse the gods, and then roll the crumpled mess between your arms until it’s small enough to stuff into a closet or drawer.
Profit.
Look for the corner that goes on the top part of the matress and use that as the corner and treat the extra bit with the elastic like frilly trim to ignore. It’s not perfect but I’ve been able to consistently get something that resembles a rectangle out of it instead of a ball.
You just nestle the corners together and then you can fold it like normal from there.
That works if the sheet only has elastic on the corners. The last few sets of sheets I have bought have elastic all the way around the edge of the fitted sheet. Does well on the bed but damn they’re impossible to fold.
It’s really not bad with full elastic bands. Make a rough square using the point of the corners as one corner and the only non-elastic fold as the opposite. Just flop the sloppy elastic to the inside. I then fold in thirds and again in thirds. Just fold the weird parts to the inside each time.
My wife still thinks it’s magic after 20 years.
You just store them like fancy towels
My ex can fold them. I tried it with some YouTube video but got nowhere, sort of an artful puddle at best.
Been folding double and queen fitted sheets for a few decades, it is not really that hard.
- Pick a side (long or short)
- put the corners into each other, by folding in half (I like to put the “body” side of the sheets inside)
- put the 2 corners together (here you can put the sheet down to make the sides “nice” so they are square)
- fold in half until you can’t I usually get 3 folds (should be about as big as a towel folded in half 3 times on the shelf but taller)
Takes a few moments once you are proficient. All my sheets have had elastic on all sides
