Making a bed is relatively time-consuming and, to many, a tedious, unpleasant task. Furthermore, bed making is labor intensive and therefore costly in hotel, motel, hospital and other operations in which large numbers of beds have to be made on a frequent, if not daily, basis.
In an effort to simplify and speed the bed making process, it has been proposed that conventional bed clothes such as top sheets and spreads be assembled together so that the making of a bed involves only the handling of a single assembly. Such proposals are found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,355,748 issued Dec. 5, 1967 to Tuvert and in British patent application No. 2079596 filed by Falces and published Jan. 27, 1982.
These prior proposals are not entirely satisfactory. Considerable time can be expended simply in properly locating a bed clothing assembly on a bed being made up. The assembly must parallel the edges of the bed, have marginal portions of equal width draped over the sides of the bed, and have a marginal portion of relatively precise length draped over the foot of the bed. The Falces and Tuvert bed closing assemblies do not aid one in thus orienting them on the bed being made up.
In making up a bed, the top spread or coverlet is commonly turned down at the head of the bed. Pillows are then placed at the head of the bed with their lower edges overlying the folded down bed clothes. The bed making process is completed by pulling or folding the top marginal portion of the coverlet up and over the pillows to cover them. This requires a rather precise turning down of the spread or coverlet so that the top edges of the pillows will not be exposed when the coverlet is thereafter turned up fold too high) or, alternatively, so that there will not be unsightly excess material at the top of the bed (fold too low). To properly locate this fold line for the pillows may require more than one try. This is frustrating and time consuming and is another problem not addressed by either Tuvert or Falces.
A blanket is commonly added to bed clothes to keep the occupants of a bed comfortable at lower temperatures. Ideally, then, a bed clothes assembly should make provision for conveniently adding a blanket to it so that the same assembly can be employed over a wide temperature range. Of those items of prior art cited above, only Falces addresses this problem. However, his solution utilizes a somewhat complicated arrangement of multiple pockets and multiple zippers that would be relatively costly to provide and cumbersome to employ.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds