My sympathies. Our bed has a fitted sheet, 4 pillows (all of which get used), and a comforter for each of us. That’s it. I refuse to have a bed that requires more maintenance than that.
Gay doesn’t necessarily equal girlie bed. supervenusfreak and I have 5 pillows, all of which see nightly use, 2 for me, 3 for him. We have the base fitted sheet. At this point, seasonal changes happen. In the summer, he’ll use the white cotton thermal blanket and I’ll use the flat sheet to cover with at night, because I’m always about 3 or 4 degrees higher than him as far as body temperature goes, and the air conditioning has to be on in the summer or I can’t even manage to sleep. In the winter, I get the white cotton thermal blanket and he gets the down-filled comforter. And that’s pretty much it for our bedclothes. If I had to deal with the irrational routine of taking a bunch of pseudo-pillows off the bed every night and putting them all back on in the morning, I’d be personally flushing them down the toilet in a week.
We don’t make the bed, either. The likelihood of anyone seeing the damn thing who isn’t us or the family is very small.
My husband chimes in to say that he, too, had a (second hand- ew) Gorbachev pillow that must have been over ten years old. He claimed no pillow would ever be as comfortable.
I, his wife, took up the challenge. I have bought about three different pillows, forced him to give each one a trial run of three nights. The third one was the charm. My husband had to admit it was an improvement over his old Gorbachev. It was an Ikea pillow of five euros. I immediately bought six spares, and plan to replace them every two years.
That will teach him.
He’s just saying that to be nice, you know…
Self-preservation, I’m sure.
This is a female thing that will never be resolved, don’t lose sleep over it. They do smell good and are fun to cuddle with.
We already have plenty of things that smell good that NEVER would have found their way into my pre-marriage bachelor pad. Scented candles, potpourri, little cloth sacks filled with lavender hanging from the doorknobs, room deodorizers that can knock a fart out of the sky in under 5 seconds, body sprays. I could go on.
I miss my old apartment. It smelled like leather couch, Doritos and Anchor Steam.
<sigh>
“Until a man is married, he isn’t complete. Once he’s married, then he’s finished.”
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Oh, this is rich. My husband complains that we have to put the comforters in duvets, that this is the most stressful and annoying chore of all time… it is BEYOND THE PALE. But he’d never wash the comforter either, and it’s so much easier to wash a duvet. He doesn’t get that it’s actually laziness that leads to the duvet, not girliness. Plus, besides the fitted and flat sheets, and pillows, that’s all we have on the bed, so it’s not like he’s standing there for 5 hours dealing with linens.
I have a Gorbachev pillow, and you’d have to pry it out of my cold, dead hand. If my husband or some other audacious monster tried to take it away, I would seriously fucking freak out and they would likely come to harm. I’ve had that pillow since elementary school, when I named it and used to talk to it. When they bury me, they better bury me with that pillow. My husband actually covets it and tries to steal it at night because it’s so perfectly squishy and awesome.
Also, to the OP-- your wife must have far more free time than I do. I haven’t made my bed since the late 80’s. Decorative pillows would wind up on the floor and would stay there. So I don’t get the fancy bed fascination. Again, pure laziness counteracts any pressure the Y chromosome would exert to cause me to do otherwise.
ETA: How do you use 3 pillows? Isn’t your head all the way cranked to the side? Or is this to prop you up because you sleep on your back? I sleep on my side, and I have one thin pillow and then Gorbachev for molding to the shape of my head. Three pillows would be overkill, for me.
Snifffffffffffffff…aah. That’s good miasma.
But, but,… If it’s good now, just think how awesome it will be when it’s broken in for ten or fifteen years. It could be the greatest pillow ever.
It could be the God pillow.
This is why I always feel so sorry for those guys that marry the girls that carry sparkly pink pens with feathers on them well into their 20s. They are forever doomed to sleep in the pretty pretty princess bedroom with more pink and flowers and ruffles than they could have previously imagined.
I have three pillows. Just…normal pillows. Two to sleep on because I find just one too ‘flat’, though it’s weird because I sleep on my stomach anyway, but meh. Then the third one I kinda…rest an arm on. When I was younger I used to sleep on a fold-out futon mattress and I had four pillows: two for my head, and the other two was placed on each side to make a kind of blocky upside-down U shape. I could sleep on one and rest an arm on another, and I found it very comforting to be surrounded by them.
So three regular ol’ pillows works just fine for me. Two for my head and one for a comfy feeling of just having it near me.
Although, now let’s talk about all the stuffed animals I have… 
I admit it.
I have the 8-dozen (well, really only 6 pillows) on my bed.
When my bed is made up, I do think that it really does make the bed look nicer - and more comfortable. And at night, all of them go on the foot of the bed, piled up on top of the layers and layers of tucked in blankets and sheets and pillows.
Because if they are not there, my feet will get cold, and then I can’t sleep and am restless all night long - but if my feet are warm, I sleep comfortably and soundly.
I actually don’t sleep with a pillow under my head, which makes the bed look very odd when it isn’t made.
I have five extra in the summer, and nine extra in the winter (bedding changes for warm and cold weather). They’re useful for reclining at an angle for viewing the big-ass HD TV, with 7:1 surround sound. It’s the best home theater system in the house, so we like to get some use out of it.
We can’t actually sleep on them, unless we like sleeping at a 30-60 degree angle. Plus, we both tend to drool in our sleep, and drooling on the $140 pillows is not appreciated. We can drool on the $40 pillows and replace them when they get gross.
Our bedroom is our only grown-up sanctuary in the house. The rest of the house is covered in toys, baby bottles, graham cracker crumbs, and finger-paintings. The bedroom has decent furniture that hasn’t been colored on, or peed on, or barfed on. It’s our refuge, and I want it to look pretty. It’s very calming to go into a peaceful, visually appealing room after cleaning up the Cheerio explosion in the kitchen, and to recline on several big fat pillows and watch a movie that doesn’t have an animal or a car as the main character.
The dust ruffle is to keep monsters from reaching out and grabbing your ankles as you go to bed at night.
I don’t even remember having these arguments I lost them so long ago:[ul]
[li]Armies of pillows marching across the bed[/li][li]A tiny fountain on the dresser in the bedroom whose only purpose is to make me pee should I stir in the middle of the night[/li][li]Bowls of dead leaves everywhere[/li][li]Towels that under no circumstances am I allowed to use but sit out in the bathroom waiting to trap me into forgetting[/li][li]The couch I’m not allowed to sit on which she refers to in hushed tones sub[/sub][/li][li]Plates I can’t use on display in a plate cabinet taking up space in one of the rooms I can’t sit in[/li][li]An utterly baffling overabundance of calendars[/li][li]Enough candles to make our house visible from space should they al be lit at once[/li][/ul]
Not worth it anymore. I have my one room, she has the rest.
I’m a single guy. I have an ancient queen size bed with a cheap K-mart bed spread over the mattress. I sleep on top of that in my winter weight sleeping bag. My bedroom gets cold! I do have four pillows though.
This is why I have a mattress on the ground.
God help you.
I have a fitted sheet on the mattress and a flat sheet on the bed. In the winter, the flat sheet is swapped out for a vellux blanket. Add three pillows (for propping, as I sleep on my stomach), and that’s it.