Goldilocks

This one's too soft. This one's too hard. This one's too scratchy. This one's too fluffy. 

I sound like the girl from the fable when it comes to pillows and sheets. I need a very specific amount of pillow or I can't get comfortable and I wake up with neck and/or shoulder pain. This makes me very reluctant to buy new pillows but let's face it, pillows need to be replaced every so often cuz, eew. Between sloughed off skin, dirt and oil from your face, and drool, pillows definitely have a limited shelf life.

We were shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond for a pizza stone and sheets last weekend when I saw a bin of pillows on sale. What really caught my eye was that they have some sort of gel fiber filling. To make it even more difficult to buy new pillows, the Mister and I both have an allergy to feather pillows. Probably the Oldest child does too but since I don't buy them, she doesn't sleep on them. Gel fiber was new to me and they had a really good price, so I bought enough for the entire family.

Next comes new sheets. Ugh. My absolutely most favorite sheets I've ever had were made out of eucalyptus. They felt almost like satin and were so soft but cool on the skin which made them very comfortable to sleep on at night. HOWEVER!! They wore out and ripped after having them for less than a year. I'm thinking it was about six to eight months before they ripped. They weren't $2000 Egyptian cotton, celebrity sheets, but they weren't cheap either. I expect sheets to last longer than several months, ya know? So, after feeling all the little sheet samples hanging about the bedding section of the store, and then feeling an intense need for some hand sanitizer, I gave up and picked a set of sheets that had a decent thread count, decent price, and were in the color I needed. Ugh, again.

Less than a week later and I'm dissatisfied with the sheets. They're not as luxurious feeling as I'd prefer. They're not terrible and they have really deep pockets to fit my mattress nicely, but they're only so so. The jury is still out on the pillows. I'm the only one still having issues with the new pillow. It literally keeps me up at night because I haven't figured out how to get comfortable with it. Frankly, it's not fluffy enough. I need another pillow that is about 1/3 of the fluffiness of the new pillow and then I'd have the perfect mix of pillows. Two pillows would be too fluffy and give me a crick in the neck.

Being in a mild insomnia cycle doesn't help. I'm getting about four hours of sleep a night which is better than some of my more severe insomnia cycles, but laying awake in the middle of the night trying to ignore the sheets and get comfortable with the pillow isn't helping matters.

Am I the only one this picky about sheets and pillows?