Sleeping in Silk

Attention dust-mite allergy sufferers: I have a solution.  It’s not going to take away your allergies, but it just might help you sleep through the night without waking up sneezing at 2:00 in the morning.  What’s the solution?  Silk comforters.

I myself didn’t know they existed until about two weeks ago.  When I got married 3 ½ years ago, I went the simple route.  I bought one of those bedding in a bag packages…it was inexpensive and easy.  There wasn’t much in the stores that I was excited about at the time (that I could afford that is), so when I saw a pattern that I even remotely liked, I didn’t care that it came in a bag.  It’s your typical cotton comforter and ever since the first time I washed & dried it, I’ve hated it.  The dryer made the cotton inside start to clump so my bedding always looked and felt lumpy.  Not to mention the fact that it is such a nuisance to wash at home (it’s a king sized comforter), so I don’t do it nearly as often as I should.  I may wash my sheets every week in hot water to kill the dust mites, but the comforter only saw the inside of the washing machine about three times a year.  Which resulted in me frequently waking up in the early hours of the morning sneezing nonstop.

Because of the sneezing and the clumpy bedding, I’ve wanted a new comforter for quite some time now.  With this new comforter, I vowed to take care of it better so that I wouldn’t be so sneezy at night, but I also wanted to make sure I got something that I could clean at home and that wouldn’t lump up on me.  I used to have a down comforter and LOVED it, but I knew it wasn’t an option this time because it’s not something I can wash at home and dry cleaning a down comforter every month is certainly too expensive of an option for me to consider.  So I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for.  Maybe just a quilted coverlet so that I could wash it at home and it wouldn’t get lumpy?  Maybe one of those down alternative comforters?

Well, in my research I discovered something better.  Something seemingly too good to be true….silk comforters.  What’s so good about a silk comforter you ask?  First of all, it’s just as warm as down.  Secondly, it’s lightweight.  These two traits combined mean I won’t be buried underneath the immense weight of the additional three or four blankets I usually have on top of my comforter.  Finally, and best of all, silk is inhospitable to dust mites.  True, silk also needs to be dry cleaned, but if you have a duvet cover, you should never have to clean your comforter—or very rarely.  And since dust mites can’t live in silk, those who suffer from dust mite allergies only have to worry about washing the duvet cover.

While not the cheapest option, it did appear to be my best one, so after quite a bit of research I ordered my very own silk comforter from Plumeria Bay (www.plumeriabay.com).  My comforter arrived yesterday, which was perfect timing as the temperatures in Wisconsin have fallen drastically in the past couple of days and it was 0 or below outside last night.  The test run turned me into a silk convert.  It was everything it claimed to be—as warm as down (so I didn’t need any of the extra blankets I’ve been sleeping with lately), lightweight and I didn’t even sneeze once after sleeping with it all night.  Granted, it’s brand new so we’ll have to see if it holds up to the test of time, but I have a feeling it will.  And if it does, I may even have to start thinking about silk sheets…

This is what my old bedding looked like:

The new silk comforter looks like this:

And is covered by this duvet cover from West Elm:

I can’t wait to go to sleep tonight!

-Sara