For almost 3 years, I didn’t sleep on a bed. I slept on the floor. Why? Obviously, I didn’t have a bed. And beds, in case you haven’t noticed, are expensive. There is really no use buying a 100-dollar bed from IKEA and breaking it from vigorous… nocturnal activities. And mattresses, don’t get me on them – they’re expensive, and the minimum quality mattress I was going to go for was way above my willingness-to-pay.
So, I slept on the floor. Until today. From today on, I shall be sleeping on corrugated cardboard.
Behold:
The story of how I came to acquire this bed is a long one. But long story short, if you want a similar bed for your own, head over to Karton – they sell awesome cardboard furniture. Cardboard furniture had popped up in my radar more than once (thanks to friends and acquaintences who have similar tastes to me), most of them are etsy-like home-made projects. I am not a very coordinated person in real life. Arts and craft projects are a no-go for me. But I had lusted over cardboard furniture. I mean, it made sense – it is environmentally friendly (the cardboard Karton uses are recycled); it looks ridiculously good, and it’s low-maintenence. But what most cardboard furniture required was time and coordination (and maybe a sense of artistry), both of which are very scarce resources to me.
At the same time, I lusted over simplicity of things. I slept on the floor because a futon – and I mean the Japanese style futon, i.e. just a thin mattress on the floor; not the Western abomination – was simple. I had always envisioned that the next upgrade from my $30 second-hand IKEA-mattress-pad* it was the single-sized Sultan TÅRSTA that I had bought 2nd hand -turned-futon would be a real Japanese futon, on a tatami. It would be simple. Elegant.
And so I hunted. I was looking for something affordable, and most Japanese-imported futons cost a bomb. But I did finally track down a shop that would be willing to import a futon from Japan for less than 500 dollars. I would be happy. But the catch was: the waiting list was over a year long. Nevertheless, I waited.
Then I stumbled on the Karton Group. Here was an opportunity for me to get something that I wanted – cardboard furniture – at a fairly affordable prices. It costs $230 inclusive of shipping to get the bed. But with a bed came the issue of the mattress. And we stalled a bit longer – about 6 months, since mattresses are by no means cheap. Finally through some serendipity, we decided to go to IKEA for lunch (meatballs are paleo as fuck – if you don’t take the mash potatoes or chips). We ended up stumbling on a sorta-sale period, and came back with the mattress. And here we are. A bed. My first one in about 3 years.
Here’s a quick review: the bed, even though it is made of cardboard, can withstand about 2800 – 3000 N worth of force (that is, assuming the acceleration towards the centre of the Earth is 10 m/s2.) Trust me, we test ran this bed the instant we finished building it. It looks ridiculously good. It is a freeform build – the spacing between the legs are completely optional – 33 cm was recommended, but we played around with it.
What follows is a series of pictures showing the building of the bed.
This blog post has been brought to you by the letter ‘W’, for whimsy. Or the letter ‘O’ for oversharing. But what the hell, it’s MY blog. I write what I want. It’s 2a.m now. I should probably commit all my code and push to github and go to bed. Yes. To bed.