Tiny Choosing Bedsheets
By Karina | December 21, 2009
I have to confess to some non-green-tiny-choosing, with regards to the new luxuriously warm and soft flannel sheets I just bought. And I bought sheets not just for me, but also for the two boys that live here part time!
In my defense, it had been a long cold November with my partner and I gasping as we slid between our plain old regular sheets. That 100% cotton, it can sure get cold when your thermostat is turned down to 55 degrees at night (and the thermostat itself is on the ground floor, and I hesitate to guess what temperature our bedrooms are in our old and drafty home). Shockingly cold. However, we have one pair of flannel sheets but we’ve been leaving them on our guest fold out couch - it’s in a room with no heat vent whatsoever, and we really do try to make our friends comfortable enough that they repeat visit.
But the most embarrassing thing about my purchase is this: I went online and looked at flannel sheets and I couldn’t see past the cute patterns out there. Seriously, there are some super cute flannel sheets out there! And in my research for this post, I confirmed that most organic flannel sheets are plain off-white in some way. Not to mention insanely expensive. And I may have thought to myself: it’s been ages since I’ve bought a set of sheets at all… and after all, I have so many sheet sets accumulated from my over-20 years in a full sized bed that I probably won’t have to buy any more for a good long time. Let me correct myself - the last set of sheets I bought was a used set in perfect condition from a flea market. Totally cute, and that sturdy kind of crisp percale that you can’t get new any more.
So, I was weak, and it was easy to justify my every-18-month breeze-through Target wherein I snagged 3 sets of flannel sheets (one full sized and two twin) for $50 - less than I’d have gotten a single pair of organic sheets for. (Less justifiable is the $16impulse lipstick in bright red that I will probably only wear 5 times. This is an example of the major reason I stay out of Target.)
So what else could I have done? I could have put a little more thought into it, and I would have seen that there ARE some super cute flannel sheets out there - and while they’re a huge amount of money, I don’t buy sheets often anyway, so they would be a reasonable investment. It’s still easy to justify my purchase - after all, it helps us keep the thermostat turned down low, and we’ll be using these flannel sheets for a solid many years. But when push comes to shove, the cotton industry is one of the dirtiest out there with giant quantities of pesticides used during growing and huge amounts of water used during processing.
So, full confession done I have to say that sliding into bed is so lovely, despite the freezing cold air temparature, and hopefully I’ll have a better bunch of sheets to choose from in 5 or 10 years when I have to replace ours. Or maybe we should have looked into wool sheets…?
What kind of sheets do you prefer? Where do you get them?
[[Photo from flickr user via creative commons license: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcarbaugh/ / CC BY 2.0]]
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Topics: Home |
and of course last night after I wrote this post I was boiling in bed, despite the extra cool temperatures in the house!
I’ve come to prefer jersey sheets over flannel, as I hate the feeling of the little pills that accumulate near my feet with flannel sheets, and while jersey isn’t *quite* as warm as flannel, it’s much snugglier than plain cotton, and seems to warm up faster. I think your tiny choice here is in choosing flannel sheets over an electric blanket!
Flannel sheets rock, in addition to the heated mattress pad that I splurged on a few years ago. I turn it on high about 1/2 hr before I go to bed and it’s toasty warm when I get in. There’s no significant increase in my electric bill and I figure that as frugal as I am 99% of the time, I deserve this one small extravagance!
I have flannel sheets. I love that while they may not be totally green (they were a gift. I suspect they are not organic) they allow me to do green things - reduce my utility use significantly and still stay warm. I avoid the pilling issue by line drying them indoors over the shower curtain rod. It also adds moisture to the dry heated air in our home which makes it feel warmer and our furnace doesn’t have to work as hard or use extra gas to keep the house warm.
when you have 2 cats and sometimes a large dog in the bed (in addition to your partner), there is no need for flannel sheets. ;) free body heat from the furry critters usually has me sticking a leg out to stay comfortable.
;)
We are building inside of an industrial metal barn shell, so until the insulation is finished (R30 exterior walls and attic ceiling, R11 in interior walls and second story floor) it gets c-c-cold in here. I found fleece sheets at Target. Not cotton, but they do save on heating costs - especially since we heat with wood and only turn on the heatpump when it really gets frigid. I must say, while they aren’t the ‘greenest’, they are the warmest sheets I have ever owned - but they are definitely WINTER sheets. As soon as the 20F nights are over, it will be back to my plain cotton sheets.
Yes, we do pile on the comforters and blankets I scavenge from estate sales too.