I got this idea while at a public bathroom. They had one of those towel devices to dry your hands. You know the ones - they are actually one long towel that only allows you to access a loop at a time. Well - why couldn't you supersize the device as a replacement for your bedsheets! You would actually need 2 - one device attaches at the head and foot of the bed with the sheet in-between - this is the bottom sheet. The top sheet is like the towel dispenser - it stays at the foot of the bed and you lay under a "loop" of the fabric. Whenever the sheets get skuzzy - you just unroll a new section. When the rolls are done, you bring them into a special cleaning service - they clean them really cheaply since they just run the whole roll through a cleaning machine, like film through a projector!-- trekbody, Dec 01 2004 kinda 1/2 baked... RollaSheet [po, Dec 01 2004] A kind of self making bed exists. http://www.ohea.eu/...-use-ohea-ohea.htmlThe bottom sheet doesn't have a self-making system, so obviously the company either doesn't know the secret underground passage to the Halfbakery, or they want patentability. [skoomphemph, Mar 03 2014] Thanks for the link Po - kinda baked - but I still like the whole giant hand towel idea which is slightly different. If for no practical reason, only to amuse myself.-- trekbody, Dec 02 2004 Seems redundant to the linked idea, to me.-- krelnik, Dec 02 2004 jutta mfd'd it but anno now gone!-- po, Dec 02 2004 As the author writes, this one has a mechanism that requires a manual pull, like a towel dispenser; whereas the linked-to idea uses a motor. That's why I deleted my deletion tag.-- jutta, Dec 03 2004 I suppose the best place for variations on this theme would be on the idea, itself, so I'll just append what's different about the version I once thought up, here.
Why wait for your sheets to ripen in odour or get grodey-to-the-max? (Like barf out! Gag me with a spewn!) A motorised version (to which this post has a link) could advance your sheet roll maybe 30 cm (so I can add, "about a foot") a day. That way, as far as your head was concerned, you'd have clean sheets every night. Your feet would think you had the smelliest bed in town, it's true, but that would make them as happy as all the lavender made your nose up the other end.
My version had velcro-ended sheet sections somewhat longer than traditional sheets (sized optimally for a washing machine, rather than for a bed). The idea was to manually velcro on a roll of sheeting in the feeder hopper whenever tearing off a section from the used sheet locker at the foot of the bed. I prefer the serviced roll of sheeting version, but sections might be nice for a home washed version.
I don't think any of the other variations I had are of any real interest. I'll update if I remember or come up with something that is.
Really, the only half-baked aspect of this idea, to my mind, is commercial viability. But see the link.-- skoomphemph, Mar 03 2014 random, halfbakery