Okay, first of all, get your mind out of the gutter. This blog is not about that kind of ‘pillow talk.’ This blog is actually about pillows. The thing is I fear I’ve done something wrong.
You see, I purchases new pillows a month or so ago. I had been using the same pillows for pretty much my entire adult life. They were flat and hard and that’s just the way things were. I then stayed at a hotel and much to my surprise the pillows were fluffy and soft, not unlike laying one’s head down on a curiously immobile sheep.
I should point out that I’ve never actually slept on a sheep. Not a live sheep, at any rate.
So, anyway, I decided to buy some new pillows.
NOTE: No, I’ve never slept on a dead sheep either. That was just there to see if you were paying attention (it was undead).
I made the trek to the ‘Linens’ section of the department store, a forbidden place to one such as myself, seeking pillows to buy. There I discovered that pillows range from amazingly expensive to dirt-cheap. Not knowing what else to do, I bought mid-range pillows and took them home.
They were all fluffy and comfortable for a while, but now they’re just as flat and as hard as my old ones.
This makes me wonder: Am I doing something wrong? Is there some sort of pillow maintenance I need to do? Do they require fluffing? Washing in cold with a tumble dry? The sacrifice of a white chicken every full moon?
Somehow, I don’t think I need to buy new pillows every few months. That just seems odd. Wait, maybe that is what I’m supposed to do? Maybe everyone else is buying pillows regularly and silently judging me for not doing so?
To sum up: my new pillows are flat. I don’t know if this is normal.
Help?
-Jason
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21 comments:
Well, I think what you need to do is fluff your pillows. At least, that what my mother told me when I had a similar problem.
The idea is to compress them in the opposite direction than when you sleep of them. So leave the top and bottom of the pillow alone, and give the pillow a couple of blows to the left & right simultaneously, and then front and back together.
Hope this helps.
micheal is right, though i shake them end to end back and forth a couple of times ever month or so, but never buy foam pillows, they break down into a sack of little bits good for nothing.
First thing in the morning (after turning off the alarm clock) is I lift my pillow on the one side, give it three or four shakes and lift it on the other side and give it three or four shakes.
Then I leave my bed "open" to let it "breath" and get all the stink it accumulated over night out.
The last thing I do before I leave for work is to make my bed.
And make sure the pillows aren't compressed over the day ( I mean do not store it in a too small place...)
Anonymous made me worry.. they leave their bed "open" to get the Stink out...
and they store their pillows?
I store my pillows.. on my bed, sometimes on my floor.. depends on how much I tossed and turned, then how late I overslept, and hit the floor running.
As for you're problem, I really don't know. Maybe that's why I have so many pillows on my bed, and switch them around. Fold them over and so on. I'll start trying the 'fluff' method, while not as exciting as what I thought fluffing was, it sounds like it could be theraputic.
couple of blows to the left & right simultaneously, and then front and back together.
Make you feel better if nothing else..
Check out this story:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/story?id=3428573
I go the chicken sacrifice route myself. The pillow dieties are most appeased by sacrifices on nights with a gibbous moon, so do your sacrificing then. It's probably best to pluck and roast the chicken after the sacrifice--don't eat it! That's a mistake a lot of newbie sacrificers make. Just feed the roasted bird, and the feathers you plucked, to the fire, and make sure they're as consumed by the flame as possible.
[This post was made for humor purposes only. The author does not actually reccommend sacrificing chickens.]
While this is true for almost all fabric goods, it particularly applies to pillows: If you want it to keep looking/acting like it did when you bought it, it's going to cost you.
Fluffing, opposite direction punching, and washing (follow instructions!) can delay the inevitable, but if you like poofy pillows, you'll either have to shell out for long-lived ones or replace them frequently.
If you do decide to buy the expensive ones, read some product reviews first. It can save you some serious swearing later.
I agree with Liz. Invest in the expensive pillows, though check out reviews and whatnot (though I've never known there to be 'pillow reviews', but I don't doubt they probably exist). I definitely understand the problems of middle ranged pillows. Every now and again I end up sacrificing the Very Old & Flat Ones to the Creeping Darkness that lurks on the other side of the bed--which is why I don't sleep there, per se (though the boyfriend seems to be okay with It).*
And what I do to fluff mine up is grab the fluff inside through the cover/casing and pull the flattened bit of cotton/nylon/Cthulhu eye crusties** apart enough times to be considered "fluffed". If it feels like there are two flattened parts in the pillow, I pull those apart, too.
* I would blame this statement on lack of sleep, but things DO seem to get interesting on the Left side of the bed.... O.o;;
** I blame this statement on lack of sleep, mostly. Then again, who is daring enough to cut open a pillow to see what it looks like on the inside??? Perhaps Cthulhu, much like the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, puts his eye crusties inside certain particularly good/bad/unstable boys and girls' pillows, so that they might dream of scary/interesting stuff...? Nah.
Okay, pillow abuse seems to be the order of the day! I will attempt to fluff and see what happens. Thanks to all of you who posted!
Does anyone have any recommendations for expensive pillows?
Thanks, Kyle, that was a helpful link!
Good point about not eating the chicken, Alexander. There would be a lot less smiting if people just remembered that.
You make interesting posts when you're sleep-deprived, Sinai_Winterwolf :)
Another way you can fluff pillows is that if you have a dryer, you can use the "Air Fluff" setting and drop your pillow in there with a fabric softener sheet. It seems to work.
If your pillows are already completely flat and hard, manual pillow fluffing might take a little while. (I'm also a fan of pulling apart anything that's gone compressed and hard inside.) Good luck, though.
Another thing I'll do is have several pillows on my bed and swap which one I'm lying on some nights. In that way, the same one isn't always being smashed.
fabric softener sheets? i cut them up and use them to filter dust and other crap on the intake side of my computer cooling fans. works a treat.
"Air Fluff"
IS THAT what it's for?
Oh this is embarassing.
HAHA, you have to love the internet. Good article about pillows.. .
For natural pillows, you should fold your pillow in half. If it just lies there, then it's dead
Well that answers a lot. Most of mine just lay there and cry, there is no bouncing back.
I do have these huge feather pillows. You know the leg/knee adjustment trick for your back? That's what those are for. They feathers poke me in the head if I try to use them as actual pillows.
Maybe I did my sacrifices wrong.
hmm
good link Kyle, thanks.
Fabric softener sheets are in general not a good idea. They make towels - and your dryer lint trap - water-proof. If you insist on using them, expect your towels to not absorb water, and every month or so take the lint trap out of the dryer and wash it with really hot water.
As for pillows, put them in the dryer on air fluff, but instead of fabric softener toss in a tennis ball. Noisy, but it works.
Okay, more good advice. Like TX_Val, I didn't actually know what the 'air fluff' setting was for. I assumed it was only used if you needed your air, y'know, fluffy.
And frankly, there needs to be a country song about dead pillows. Something mournful about a cowboy finding that his faithful pillow had died and burying it in the desert.
My pillow is gone,
he ain't fluffy no more.
Guess I'll saddle the horse
and go to the store.
Or something.
The "dryer with a tennis ball" is an old trick. Beating your dead sheep (er, I mean pillow) senseless is cathartic, especially around Thursday when work seems at its worse. However, it can leave the sheep lumpy.
(Yes, I really do call my pillows "dead sheep")
When washing a pillow, make sure you check what it is made out of and washing directions. Expensive pillows go flat too (sometimes even quicker) so don't worry, keep the ones you have until the stuffing comes out. You should only need to wash a pillow biannually, unless you have asthma, really greasy hair, or drool excessively. Or spill your chicken's blood as you pray to the fluff gods to resurrect your dead sheep.
My friend is a country singer. Such lyrics fascinate me like roadkill....
Woke up in the mornin'
An' I raised my weary head.
Got a dead sheep for a pillow
An' a rockmine for a bed.
I ain't got no sleep number.
The Lord knows how I can dream!
So I punch that durned flat pillow
Every time I want to scream.
[Chorus]
Cause she left me for a man
With satin sheets on his bed.
He's got a posturepedic mattress
And real goose down for her head.
Yeah, she left me for a man
With a California King size bed.
Now my face is buried in pillows
To hide how my eyes have turned red.
Yeehaw!
I love it, Rhov! You really, really need to get your friend to sing that with appropriate music!
And I'm going to start calling my pillows 'dead sheep' from now on :)
Nice, I can even get the beat going in my head. *taps his foot*
Rodney carrington could make it into a song.. .google/youtube him up if you're bored. He makes great country jokes.
I think he sings stuff like 'momma's got her boobs out' and 'dear penis.'
This talk of pillows reminds me of a story I wrote awhile back. The Toy!
Deep in the shadows on the bed under the pillows
lurks the toy!
Its longer, but I shall spare everyone of the toy.
Yeah, My Dad & my brother kill the regular pillows that My Mom buys. My bro has over-killed it to a zombie pillow.
What you should do is buy one of those Temper-Pedic pillows. I have one and I love it! Here's the web site: www.tempurpedic.com
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