the princess and the pea

The perfect night's sleep ~ isn't that a quest we all seek?

Our pillows were recently declared f.l.a.t. and no longer positively contributing to that elusive perfect night's sleep. We go through pillows kinda quickly (big heads?) and I was thinking that one reason is because we go all out and spend all of ten bucks a pillow at Target. 

So we took ourselves to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get what we thought were real pillows, grown up pillows. We read labels, smushed pillows, and tried to imagine ourselves sleeping on them. Greg and I are both side/back sleepers heavy on the side sleeping. Since we tend to smush pillows at a relatively quick pace, we picked out very firm pillows that were supposed to be side sleepers. Greg got a pricey one (worth four Target pillows) and I got a cheaper one (worth two Target pillows).

Here we go! Here comes the perfect night's sleep. Surely we would hear the angels sing as we slumbered on our new real pillows.

Not so much.

Those pillows were three feet tall and never smushed down all night. We both woke up with headaches. Not a perfect sleep.

Convinced that we just needed to get used to them we continued using them for two more nights. After that we threw our old pancake pillows on the bed.

We returned the pillows and got two of the twenty dollar pillows that were less firm. These pillows were still three feet tall, but less firm would mean more smash, right.

Not so much.

We didn't even last a full night with those bad boys. The mammoth pillows were once again rejected for their flatter counterparts.

And I marched them right back to the store and endured the ugly looks the cashier gave me when she realized that this was the second set of pillows I was returning. I might have run out of the store after my transaction.

I went to Target and plopped down twenty whole bucks for two pillows labeled for side/back sleepers.

And that night the angels sang.

The moral of this story? More expensive is not always better.

Or Target rules.

Either way, we are back on the road to the perfect night's sleep and it is not likely that I will spend more than ten bucks on a pillow ever again.