Dust always. We live on a gravel road and have two dogs.
Otherwise
- Cell Phone. It acts as my clock. Don’t really need a clock though. Dogs wake us up by 3:30am every morning. I haven’t slept until sunrise for decades. Just the way I am.
- Kindle
- Lamp
My side has a coaster, 2 books, Chapstick, a lamp. The other side has a lamp and 2 books on top of which is the alarm clock.
The current book, reading glasses, CPAP machine, iPad, clock radio, phone charging cord.
Overnight, a tumbler of iced Crystal Lite.
mmm
A lamp, my Kindle and a wristwatch that I never wear. At night, add my glasses.
Monkey wrench.
Half-eaten ham sandwich.
Wilson Pickett’s Greatest Hits.
Lamp, charging cord, water bottle because I take medication that gives me dry mouth, lip moisturizer, eye drops for the same reason.
The nightstand actually has two drawers that I use for less than frequently-worn clothing like long johns, a special slip that goes with a single skirt, etc. and a heating pad and wrist brace. Because getting old.
Can it be a nightstand from my past?
Senior year of college I moved out of an Animal House and into the upstairs of an elderly widow’s house. It was so quiet (no TV or music), that I’d go to bed early under a handmade comforter, in my four-poster antique bed.
And reach over to my nightstand, where I had a stack of at least twenty books. What a feeling, to have hours of reading ahead of me and nothing I even have to think about except “What literary mood am I in tonight?”
It was more important to me to when I began working from home to have a reasonably sized office than a large master bedroom, so my bedroom is both too small and too oddly shaped to accommodate a night stand.
Someday…
Lamp
Unread books
Pen and paper
Tissues
Earbuds
Bottle of water
My glasses when i sleep. This is why i need to have a nightstand, or something like it, it to sleep on the floor. I need to be able to find my glasses when i wake up.
I have all sorts of other stuff, too. A clock radio that hasn’t worked on more than a decade, that holds a lamp at a nice height. The lamp. My wallet. My keys. Some pocket knives. A couple of pens. A box of tissues. My phone charger. Loose coins.
If we’re talking inside the nightstand: top drawer is where I stash my glasses at night. It also holds a couple of knee braces, a “tactical” flashlight, the remote for the bed and a loaded .357. The bottom drawer has a couple of disposable pairs of slippers I got at a fancy hotel, a watch cap and a couple of .45 autos (unloaded.)
That and Elmo had a minor fuss happening over a pic of his nightstand.
On: Lamp and cat.
In drawers: tissue, lotion, earplugs, alarm clock, eye drops, vibrator, phone on charging cord and tablet. Oh and a couple of books and a flashlight. Just in case.
normally phone tablet and a cat who usually nocks everything else off of it
I’m not even going to get into what’s in the drawer (besides my glasses, to keep them safe from the cats.) There are things in that drawer which have been in there way too long, and things in that drawer that I’ve entirely forgotten are in there; as well as a number of things that I use routinely, or at least often enough to remember about them.
When we slept in a room too small for nightstands, we got some wall mounted corner shelves for our stuff. Of course, that was over 30 years ago and we didn’t have or need so much stuff back then, but maybe something like that could help? (As a bonus, they were too small for our cats so they left our stuff alone).
Chargers, phones/tablets (overnight), tissues, small bottle of water, remote control.
Sometimes I write notes in that dust.
A book
A couple of classical music concert programmes
My smartphone
Some hand lotion that my ex gave me at the start of our relationship three years ago
My Fitbit charger
Some melatonin pills
Ditto. That’s a long list, and I’d have to look for it to be complete.
I’d consider a shelf you can reach from in bed to be a form of night stand. For that matter, my husband doesn’t have a stand-alone piece of furniture, the top of his dresser serves as his nightstand. He keeps a clock there, and his phone lives there overnight.
Clock radio (though not in use much). CPAP. iPhone. Apple-Watch charger. Use-at-need pharmaceuticals. Glasses.