When I graduated from college I gave my bed to my roommate only to realize just how expensive a bed was. I bought an air mattress and slept on that until it popped. The night it popped I still slept on it realized it was still comfortable and continued to use the popped mattress as a pad. When I moved about a year later I threw out the popped mattress and just pilled blankets on the floor. I slept that way for another year. Now I’m back to an air mattress. Its very comfortable and cheep I don’t see myself buying a bed anytime in the near future and if I get a girl friend that minds I guess I just end up sleeping at her house more.
I like sleeping on the floor, at least when I’m in Korea. It’s much cooler in the summer, and the floors over here are heated in the winter, so it works out well.
Now, when I was in Chicago, sleeping on the floor in winter was not an option. Unless you had a heating pad. Maybe.
When I was around 9 years old, my mother told me I had to make my bed every morning before I could have breakfast. I was not at all keen on making my bed, so I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag for a couple of weeks. I thought that was an ideal solution to the problem and was planning to sleep on the floor indefinitely, but mom eventually said that I could have breakfast without making my bed if I would please go back to sleeping in the bed. Since then I haven’t had any extended bouts of sleeping on the floor.
I’m a side-sleeper with what seem to be very pointy hips and shoulders. So floor sleeping doesn’t work for me because my shoulder and hip start to hurt very quickly with that much pressure on them. But if I could ever learn to sleep on my back (My chiropractor wants me to do that anyway because, even in a bed, there’s too much weight on my shoulder, and it’s causing pain.), the floor would probably be fine.
I sleep on my side too, and even though I wouldn’t describe my hips and shoulders as more pointy than average, they’ll start hurting after awhile when I’m lying on my side on a carpeted floor with padding under the carpet.
I slept on a Japanese futon for six years, and on a platform bed with an air mattress for about 4 years before that. My wife wanted a bed when she moved in, so we bought a platform-style bed that has slats for support and put two Japanese (read: thin) futon on top of the slats. I found out when staying with relatives that regular beds are way too soft for me now. Makes my back hurt when I have to sleep on a normal mattress. Hard ones work kinda-sorta, but not all that well.
During cold winters, having insulation under you is important. That’s where a bed helps, actually. My first couple of winters here were the coldest (according to locals, the coldest in 15–20 years; lucky me) and I put a couple of heavy blankets under my futon to get the necessary insulation.
Floor sleepers - do you sleep on your back or front or sides?
I’m like some others here, and I sleep on my side(s). Floor sleeping doesn’t do it for me, because all my weight is then on my hip and shoulder, and I end up with pain and numb spots for a while afterwards.
I have to know how this works for you in the winter. How do you keep yourself warm?
Last summer I started to sleep on my air mattress instead of the bed (for some strange reason I like to take naps on the floor instead of in a bed and after spending a week or two napping on the air mattress I just started sleeping on it too). It was quite pleasant and comfortable. In the winter the air mattress was freezing though. Sleeping in a hardwood Pittsburgh basement meant not having the best insulation in the world but the air mattress made it awful. I was able to gain some relief by placing a blanket between the floor and the mattress but I was still noticeably colder.
I would usually go to sleep on my back but often wake up on my side.
If it got cold, I would just wrap the blanket a bit snugger. I usually left the window open a bit as well, but winters in Edinburgh don’t often go much below zero (32F).
I sleep on my stomach, and do not have a problem sleeping on the floor.
The first night in my new apartment, I was looking for a place to put my floor mat. There was a 2’ x 4’ vestible with a window at the end of it. Perfect spot!
I find that every month or so I need to sleep on something different. I get too used to my bed and pillows so often for stretches I will sleep on the floor, or the couch. Once I even slept outside on the porch on a beautiful fall evening.
I would love to be able to nap on the floor, read books and the newspaper while laying on the carpeted floor, would probably even consider sleeping there regularly with a sleeping pad, but the scorpions keep me from ever atempting it.
I’ve always had trouble waking up on time in the morning – I tend to stay up way too late, and am usually a heavy sleeper, and sleep through my alarms. This only got worse when I started college, because I was being extra sociable (hanging out with people in the dorms) but I still had those early morning classes I had to get to. Rather than realizing one thing or another had to give, I decided I’d get the best of both worlds – I stayed up late at night hanging out with people, then, on school nights, I’d make myself sleep on the bare floor with just one pillow and a thin sheet for blanket. The idea was that I’d sleep so uncomfortably that I wouldn’t get into too deep a sleep and miss my classes. And it more or less worked – the floor was so uncomfortable that I never overslept! Of course, I now shudder to think how many years I shaved off my life with all that sleep deprivation, but at the time it seemed like a grand idea. :smack:
A couple years later after I’d graduated, I spent a summer with my sister in a small apartment. She didn’t have an extra bed, so we bought an air mattress. That worked just fine for about a week, until it developed its first leak. It was all downhill from there – the patches that came with the bed didn’t work, and the leaks got worse and worse – I’d wake up in a flabby, uncomfortable bed, and at the end, I was more or less sleeping on the floor again. I’ve appreciated my beds ever since.
I rather enjoy sleeping on the floor, always have. It’s a good quality for a drunk to have, since we tend to end up down there anyway. 