What to fill a beanbag chair with

In My Humble Opinion
1

Most of the fill sold anywhere now is shredded memory foam. I don’t personally find this very satisfying to sit on when I want a beanbag, because I remember beanbag chairs from the 60s and 70s, that were filled with beads made of PVC (and, I think once, one homemade one filled with actual beans).

I had a couple of them in the 80s and early 90s filled with the polystyrene pips, or whatever they were, which flattened over a few years, and had to be refilled.

I am aware that PVC and polystyrene are both terrible for the environment (as is the foam of foam mattresses), albeit, PVC beads will at least last the life of the chair, and can even be used to fill another one.

At any rate, I really, really want a beanbag chair, and a big one.

But what can I fill it with that is safe, or at least relatively so, for the environment, comfortable as a beanbag fill, and affordable (I’m not poor, and I’m willing to invest in something that will last, but I’m not rich, either)?

All suggestions welcome, but ones you have personal experience with are especially so.

2

I think you’re looking at this backwards. Shop for a secondhand beanbag chair from 40 or 50 years ago and just replace the bag part.

3

Then you might want to consider actual beans. Or perhaps red beans and rice. In tough time you could eat them.

4

I’d say foam peanuts and cotton quilt batting torn up in chunks. The cotton batting will ball up pretty quickly and possibly suspend itself in the peanuts.

I haven’t tried this but I’ve thought about it quite a bit and I believe it would work.

ETA, I just looked on Amazon, you can get the polystyrene beads. " big Joes Brand" …weird.

5

What about buckwheat?

6

The old-fashioned plastic bag beans are actually kind of expensive in chair-filling quantity.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/ACEssentials-Polystrene-Bean-Refill-for-Crafts-and-Filler-for-Bean-Bag-Chairs-100-liters-3-5-cubic-feet/5691347

Maybe you can find a source of surplus Beanie Babies and stuff it with those. Recycling is environmentally responsible!

7

Actually, looking closer at that Walmart link, they aren’t the kind of beads I meant to link. This is the Beanie Baby type beads I was thinking of.

8

I’m a target shooter and buy bag type rests that are unfilled. I fill mine with air-soft BBs like these.

It would probably be expensive to fill a chair though. These are .20 gm weight, but they are also available in .12gm weight.

Just searched Google for “bean bag filling” and WalMart seems to have lots available.

9

We used them by the ton at work. They are officially called EPS beads - expanded polystyrene. They produce acetylene in small quantities when newly blown. We had to age ours for a month for safety reasons. We did have a large quantity flash into flames from a spark during a demonstration for the public at an open house. Bad NASA!

10

Those are available on Amazon. For a price. Whew!

11

Reduce reuse recycle. I think this is closer to reuse as in re-purpose. :wink:

But still, anything that takes a beanie baby off the Earth is progress.

12

I’ve been trying for a while. Goodwill and Craig’s list local – zip --. eBay, shipping is too high, and the stuff looks like it might have bedbugs, or smallpox.

13

Buckwheat hulls (not the milled grain, the hulls) would work nicely. I’ve got a couple of pillows filled with them.

ETA: Prices seem to vary considerably. Fedco’s selling them for use as mulch; my guess is that this is one of the cheaper prices you’re going to get, at least unless buckwheat’s grown and processed in your area, in which case I’d check out the mill.

14

I used a buckwheat hull pillow for years & liked them. Infinitely moldable, but not at all spongy. But …

Buckwheat hulls are heavy. A beanbag chair full of hulls would weight WAG 75-100 lbs. If the OP wants an especially large beanbag chair we might be talking even more weight.

15

BBs were already on my list (they are biodegradable), but the expense made them a no-go-- except I might get a 2.5 gallon Ziploc, and fill it with the metal (not lead) kind, and then tape it to the bottom (inside), to make sure the beanbag doesn’t ever topple.

It specifically says “don’t use for beanbag chairs.” So I Googled “Why can’t I…etc.?” The answer is that “they don’t compress.” Neither do beans, genius, nor the pellets used in 1960s beanbag chairs, albeit, beans, and the original pellets (no mass-marketed chair ever had beans) were smooth, not jagged-edged, and slid around each other easily. Beanie babies pellets probably don’t.

You can use them for rock tumbling, though.

Which made me think of the ceramic pellets (environmentally safe) I use for rock tumbling, but those are also cost-prohibitive, and heavy.

They just can’t ever get wet. And some people report mice eating through bags that have used organic fillings (beans, rice, buckwheat, sunflower seed). I Googled to see if anyone sells just sunflower seed shells, or pistachio nut shells. Sunflower shells I couldn’t find, and pistachio shells are almost as expensive as they are when they still have nuts in them.

But, as I Googled, I ran across “crushed walnut shells” (which are used for everything from cat litter to rock polishing to mulching). They are very cheap-- 4 $20 bags could fill one of the 5’ diameter, 24" high beanbags I’m looking at. I want to get a good lining of batting, maybe double for the part I’ll be sitting on directly, and maybe a plush cover as well (which I don’t object to, even if it sounds a little tacky-- it’s a freaking giant beanbag).

This seems to be the best option for an environmentally friendly fill, that is cheap & comfortable, but won’t attract pests.

Yes, inner liner, shell, outer cover, and fill comes in at slightly under $200, but a couch would cost a lot more.

16

Pretty litter?

17

It doesn’t have to be pretty. Nobody’s going to see it.

18

Hopes and dreams? Thoughts and prayers?

19

At one time I had a bed pillow that was filled with buckwheat hulls. Is that what you mean? Or the whole buckwheat seed and hull? The pillow was pretty heavy for it’s size.

20

Whatever you decide to use, don’t just pour it all loose into the bean bag. Fill old plastic grocery bags individually and then tie them up tight - stuff it with those. You’ll be amazed at how much stuffing it takes to fill a bean bag chair.

If you ever need to move it or fluff it or whatever, you’ll be very glad to be able to deal with the stuffing in discrete units rather than one huge mass. It also helps to keep the bag from getting flattened. Just roll it around to redistribute them inside.