Pillows. Our secret, intimate bedtime buddies. Soft buddies. Cradling our wee, sweet heads, night after night, like so many fat, fluffy buns. Best friends, really, wouldn’t be overstating the relationship.
As winter rolls in, our bond with this holiest of all inanimate objects becomes even more important: Between being frozen from the outside (thanks to freezing rain and wind, etc.) and being cooked from the inside (thanks to in-store music, Christmas-carol Gap commercials, and other holiday-related idiocy), it’s amazing our heads survive the season at all. Poor things.
So here’s your chance. Make amends with that faithful old friend, your pillow. Or—for reasons that shall quickly become clear—get a fresh start entirely. And if you’re stuck for gift ideas, nice pillows seem (sadly) to qualify as one of those purchases too indulgent for people to make for themselves.
Now, be honest: Do you get along with your pillow? Do you take care of it? Or do you sweat and drool and roll around on it? Do you scrunch it up, cram it behind the bed frame, and hurl it down onto the floor? Do you wash it? Ever? (Yes, you can—and really should—wash your pillows, not just the cases. Often. And hotly.) If not, don’t bother feeling guilty. You’ve paid for your neglect. While you’ve been blissfully snoozing away, gurgling and oozing out your horrible stuff, your pillow has been dying. Not from anything so poetic as heartbreak, but from a fate far more disgusting: Science tells us that after six years, one-tenth of a pillow’s weight is poo. Yes, our other old friend, poop. Number two. Crap. You’ve been sleeping on, in part, a big bag of shit. Well, not entirely: In addition to dust mite “excreta,” you’ve got mite carcasses, live dust mites, and piles of your own dead skin. Hooray! (This is likely why you feel kind of puffy and icky after you get up—you’ve just stuffed your face into a pile of dust-mite poo for eight hours.)
Predictably, perhaps thankfully, it’s too late for that pillow. Farewell, old pal. Of course, you can always use the “fold test” to be sure (also a good way to test new pillows): Fold your pillow in half (in thirds if it’s king-sized), and a good pillow will bounce back. The same test works for synthetics, but add a 10-ounce weight (like a shoe) to hold the fold, then take it off and see if the pillow pops back.
But folding, naturally, doesn’t remove poop. For that, you’ll need to follow two rules: Always get at least a 230- or 250-thread count cover and/or get a likewise tightly woven, allergen-blocking pillow sleeve (having both is not overkill). That should keep most mites and gunk out to start with. To exterminate everything else, wash your pillows weekly. Wash in hot water, on permanent press or delicate (to keep from beating them up too much), and when you’re drying them (on as high a heat as possible), take them out occasionally to fluff out the wet clumpy spots. You can use a tennis ball or shoe to do this, but that’s just going to prematurely wear out your pillows (and your shoes, and your tennis balls).
Buying a new pillow, of course, is the best way to guarantee a fresh start. And despite an overwhelming array of brand names, fillings, thread counts, sizes, and mysterious-sounding industrial contents and processes (Hyperclean, Alpifil, Primaloft, Imaginair, et al.), shopping for a pillow is perhaps the most pleasant consumer experience you’ll ever have to endure. You get to lie around on beds and squeeze stuff all afternoon, and you don’t have to know much.
The choices are intimidating until you realize that it’s all pretty much the same thing. Unless you have some sort of strange, gigantic head, always buy a standard-sized pillow—this gives the filling less room to break down and spread around in. If you can afford down, buy it. It’s more comfortable; washes and dries better than synthetics; lasts longer; and can be repaired, restuffed, or recombined into new pillows. And don’t be fooled by 95-to-5 ratios of feathers to down; they’re not the same thing. Feathers, for example, can poke you, while down, ever polite, cannot and will not. Also, cheaper down smells like chickens (not chicken, the meat, but chickens, the creatures).
Never pay retail—pillows are always on sale somewhere. Choosing firmness is intuitive: If you sleep on your stomach, get a thin pillow; if you sleep on your back, get a thicker one; side-sleepers (and snorers who should be forced to become side-sleepers) should buy the firmest, fattest pillows. Buy what’s comfortable. Take your time in the store. Take a nap.
Weird, contoured foam pillows can solve specific back pain or snoring problems, but they generally don’t last as long and can involve expensive experimentation. Consider Tempurpedic pillows. They’re about $120 (arguably a semiobscene price), but they’re based on a strange and wonderful (and kind of creepy, really) temperature-sensitive material designed for NASA astronauts in the ’70s. These squishy space-age friends have made a lot of people very happy. Just remember: Unless you’re using your pillow exclusively in the vacuum of space, you’ll still need a tight mite-blocking cover. Your pillow deserves as much.
Thanks to Jill Lightner and her family of pillows (Pillow Buddy, Pillow Friend, Flat Pillow, Giant Pillow, and Bad Pillow) for their disturbingly encyclopedic knowledge and assistance.
Get It?
Experience the wonders of viscoelasticity with TEMPURPEDIC ASTRO-PILLOWS ($120), available at Bed Bath & Beyond (1930 Third, 448-7905) and Brookstone (Pacific Place, 340-4100).
There’s always a good sale on DOWN PILLOWS ($60 to $120) at the good ol’ Bon Marche (Third and Pine, 506-6605).
Apply for financing on fine pillows like the OSLO and the HUTTERITE at Duxiana (Rainier Square, 442-0119).
