Sleeping on the floor, night one.

I got rid of my bed this morning. It was an idea I’d had lingering around for a few weeks but I hadn’t gone through with it. 

I did the same thing when I was an undergrad -- maybe eight or nine years ago. I had been feeling depressed about not having a job that semester & not being able to afford college tuition, so I had a lot of free time and slowly, I started going on a downward spiral. I was staying up really late and waking up around noon or early afternoon. Obviously, I wasn’t happy with myself about that situation at all. I saw myself as lazy and unmotivated and I noticed the symptoms of depression, so one morning -- or maybe afternoon, let’s be real -- I woke up, threw the sheets off my bed, and took my bed apart. 

My roommates were all in class. I dragged my mattress from my bedroom all the way across the parking lot and to the trash bin, and then I did the same with the box spring. Once back in my bedroom, I cleaned the floor and set up a tendido, as we say in Mexico. Just a couple of thick blankets and pillows on the floor. 

Well, today I didn’t throw my bed at the dumpster, I gave it away. It was a queen-sized bed I had purchased at a mattress store not more than five years ago along with its metal frame. I had gotten a memory foam mattress at another store as a topper since the bed was too firm for my liking. Being a stomach sleeper, the memory foam made sleeping… delicious. 

I really loved that bed. When I became single about three years ago, I purchased two large body pillows to cuddle with and extra pillows for more comfort since I missed the feeling of sleeping next to someone and all those pillows helped my bed feel less empty. I bought large fuzzy blankets and nice bedding sets. I'd made my bed so comfortable that I didn't miss at all sharing it with someone as time passed. 

But lately, as I deal with a lot of mental stress from a lot of stuff I have going on in life, I’ve noticed that I’ve been oversleeping. In the mornings I have to set up several alarm clocks, fifteen or thirty minutes apart, and I keep snoozing them until the last one. Even then, I still won’t want to wake up, since more than likely, I've been up really, really late the night before out at work or studying for class. It just hasn’t made me feel good about myself again - the oversleeping - and I blame a lot of that alarm-snoozing on how comfortable my bed was with the thick blankets, pillows, and me sinking into the glorious memory foam. 

So I woke up today and the first thing I did was get rid of my bed, just like that. I kept only the three-inch memory foam, one fuzzy blanket, and my pillows. I cleaned the floor and set it up, and that’s what I’ll be sleeping on now. 

It may seem weird to sleep on the floor, but... our ancestors slept like that? It’s not that weird to me. Consumerism and capitalism in our Western culture has made it so that the Sleep Number, Tempurpedic, cooling technology style beds are what is healthy for you, but they're not. Clearly. Many people in Japan still sleep on the floor today and are perfectly healthy and agile well into their old age. 

In doing this, I’m mostly hoping that my bed isn’t too comfortable for me to oversleep. Also, I want the health benefits for my back alignment and to have more mobility/flexibility with all the extra movements that it will take me daily to get on the floor to sleep and get up off the ground when I wake up. 

I really wanna set better sleeping habits for myself. Go to bed early, wake up early. Move more. Actually make it to the gym that I started paying for in December and which I’ve only been to a handful of times. Sleeping so much is keeping me from enjoying more daylight and being more active, so yea. I kicked my bed to the curb today. Let’s see how it goes. 

Tonight will be night one. I’m anticipating that as I adjust, my back and hips are going to hurt for maybe a week or a couple of weeks, but I’m going to see it through for at least a month until I decide if I want to add in a second memory foam topper. But as for now, I am definitely not going back to a bed because I see traveling in my near future. Owning a bed doesn’t make sense to me if I want to pick up and go in a few months. 

I'll write next week about how Bedless Week One went. Goodnight. 😴