"My colleagues are calling me a monster for my new bed arrangement."

A couple of days ago, my fella and I made a decision that could well blow your mind.

We ditched the top sheet from our bed. Now we snuggle flesh (okay, flannos) STRAIGHT TO DOONA.

I don’t think it’s overstating to say this has changed my life forever.

There’s a glorious lightness to slipping under the feathery softness of duck down with nothing but a cotton cover in between. Our feet are free, no longer pinned by sheets tucked with military precision under the Sealy Posturpedic. We’ve stopped fighting over the covers because when we roll over we’re more like a well-oiled cog than an industrial drill. We don’t get knotted and possessive.

Research shows every week we lose an entire night’s sleep. But, how can you ever catch up? (Post continues after video.)

Making the bed takes a full 1.3 seconds — and that includes decorative pillow placement.

Admit it — you know what I’m talking about.

But now? Now my workmates have branded me a “monster”. One actually looked me in the eye — probably praying I wouldn’t bite — and said “You’re an animal” and not in the way you’d say it to a prospective shag.

I’m pretty sure she thinks the next thing I’ll do is chow down on a bowl of Chum.

This is her reasoning.

1. If you’re human, you wash your sheets every week.
2. But you don’t wash your doona every week because it’s too much trouble. Even for homo sapiens.
3. Therefore, me and my festy, drooling, hairy partner will spend six months — maybe more — sleeping under an unwashed doona cover, humping like donkeys, picking at each other’s nits and tearing into the flesh of any small rodent that might happen by. I’ll probably forget how to speak.
4. Therefore, we are animals.

Nearly everyone agreed with her.

WE ARE NOT ANIMALS. Image via iStock.

Then there was this:

"What will you do if you get hot???" (Oh, I don't know. Throw the doona back?)

I'm probably not sufficiently evolved to know this, but one of the best ways of lowering body temperature -- according to experts like Natalie Dautovich, who works with America's National Sleep Foundation and has a PhD and is an assistant professor at Virginia College University -- is to stick your foot out from under the covers.

Peeps, it's so much easier to get your foot out from under the covers IF IT'S NOT STUCK UNDER A SHEET!!

And this just in: instead of the top sheet, we'll wash the doona cover instead. Because we both have opposable thumbs, we should be able to slide the doona back inside it without too much trouble.

We are not the animals here.

If we're going to get rid of the top sheet, why not have a beautiful doona? (Post continues after gallery.)

(Note: While I was prepping this piece, I came across this:

"I'm going to admit a secret here... I use the flat sheet, but not the way I think it was intended. I make the bed with both the fitted and flat sheet, and then I sleep on top of the flat sheet until it is time to change the sheets (generally for about a week) and then remove the flat sheet and sleep on the fitted sheet for about the same amount of time.
Then I wash both sheets and start over again. It makes for less sheet washing, because instead of washing the sheets every week I only need to wash them every other week!"

And I think you'll agree, my top-sheeting friends, that is really weird.)