Gedding some Bedding

When packing our meager selection of possessions, we had to rule out most of our larger pieces.  We know about most of the chunky hobby equipment like my 5 gallon fermenting vessels and most of our kitchen tools, but what about some often unseen but vital housewares like bedding?

Certainly we couldn't bring along our large comforter on this trip, nor was it nice enough to put into our parent's basements storage space, so along it went on our month-long road trip, never to be heard from again.  Same story with sheets.  Who knew what size bed we would find in the furnished apartment scene here in Dublin?  "Probably not queen size." was our thought, and we were correct.  Most of the apartments we looked at (and the one we chose) have double size beds.  We got some cheap double size sheets our first week here, along with pillows.  Blankets, or what we may have called a comforter back in Iowa, were another story.

We did bring along one homemade fleece blanket, one Iowa Hawkeyes fleece blanket, and Sara's Thesis Blanket that are all personal cherished treasures for us.  Treasures, yes.  Warm enough for the approaching Autumn?  No.  We had to find something warmer and fitting the double size bed.  Luckily, Sara was sharp enough to check the discount department store before buying anything too expensive.  She found something called a duvet.  That word sounded unfamiliar and suspiciously Frenchy to me when I first heard it.  Apparently they do their sleeping warmers just a bit different than we (I) were familiar with.

Duvet and Sheets

...So, the duvet is just the warm part of the equation.  The liner of the duvet cover.  We I didn't know much about the changeable duvet/duvet cover system, so we started using the duvet without the cover.  I remember saying things like, "Boy!  This sure was a cheap duvet.  It keeps very warm, but the material feels really rough and the seams don't seem very strong."  If only there were something with which to cover this cheap duvet-thing...

We later learned about the changeable duvet cover/duvet liner situation.  The duvets are rated on a scale of insulation, called TOG.  Higher TOG numbers are warmer duvets.  Duvet covers are softer and more durable, protecting the warm liner within.  Many duvet covers are more expensive than the duvets themselves.  The duvet cover is open on one end and closed with a series of buttons.  The duvet is stuffed into the duvet cover on the open side then the buttons are sealed up.  Once we bought a specific, dedicated duvet cover, the system all made sense.  We now have a washable, comfortable, durable comforter (as we would call it in Iowa) to keep warm at night.  After we purchased the duvet cover, I realized that we did have a duvet cover in our first bedsheet set, but we had been using it as a flat sheet.  "...So that's what those buttons are used for on the flat sheet!  I wondered why that sheet was so big for the bed!"  

Totally unresearched conclusions:  A lighter duvet is in the duvet cover during warm summer months while a heavier, warmer duvet is in the cover during the cold winter?  Duvet covers can be swapped out to match the current color palette of the bedroom set?

Whatever the trend, it was one more little change that was only recently solved permanently, mostly due to laziness and penny-pinching on my part.  It finally feels like, we have a real home or something... weird.