A couple months back I noticed that that my hand frequently fell asleep while I was in bed at night. After some Googling and observation, I realized that the combination of placing my hand under the pillow up by my face and the weight of my head pressing down on the whole mess was cutting of circulation to my hand. I sleep on my side and like having my hand(s) up by my face, so I needed to find a way to create more space at the top of my bed.
After investigating some other ideas (getting a bigger bed, kicking my wife out of bed, getting rid of the bed entirely and sleeping on the floor, never sleeping again, chopping my hand(s) off, chopping my head off) I figured the easiest thing to do would be to find a smaller pillow. This meant I got to do one of my favorite things- spend months doing research on something stupid (in this case, pillows).
I scoured the internet for smaller pillows. It seems like there’s a general consensus about “normal” pillow sizes (which I didn’t know about prior to my search but I suppose makes sense given how pillowcases seem to always fit pillows). Mine was a “standard” pillow- roughly 20 x 26 inches (51 x 66 cm), and while there were plenty of larger standard sizes, smaller got weird quick.
I looked at camping pillows, but I hated the aesthetic, and many were made from strange and exotic materials which naturally increased the overall cost. Also, I’d need pillow cases, which made things more difficult.
I felt like I was making progress by searching for “toddler pillows” but there were an enormous amount of different sizes, materials, and prices. I basically wanted my current pillow, just half the size!
A couple months after starting my search, while investigating the costs of fully bespoke pillows, I realized that Occam’s razor might be deftly applied to my conundrum as literally as a theoretical razor could be utilized.
So, as you may have surmised from the title of this post, I chopped my pillow in half.
I could use my existing pillowcases. I wouldn’t have to spend any money or wait for anything to ship. What could possibly go wrong?
(Usually when someone says, “what could possibly go wrong” that means something will invariably go wrong but, let me assure you dear reader, everything is okay, you need not hold your breath)
I did find that the pillow was unexpectedly difficult to cut through since it was so squishy. Also, I inadvertently created a second pillow I had no use for, so that is now taking up space jammed into a closet somewhere. Also, the case holding the actual pillow now has some extra material I need to fold back when sliding into the pillowcase itself, but that’s easy enough to manage.
But aside from that, everything’s great! I created my dream pillow and my hand no longer falls asleep at night.
P.S. I want to clarify for the goofballs out there that I chopped it in half vertically, not horizontally (the end result was not two long, skinny pillow scraps).