Ahh, the wonders of memory foam.  Memory foam is clearly the biggest technological breakthrough and scientific marvel since penicillin.  If you don’t believe me, just lay down on a memory foam mattress or a memory foam pad for awhile, and you’ll see the light.  If you have the pleasure of sleeping on a memory foam pad, you’ll wake up feeling better than you ever have before, your IQ will raise 10 points immediately, you’ll know several languages you’ve never heard before, and you’ll suddenly have the weight and body shape you’ve always wanted to have.

Okay, okay, so that’s not all true.  In fact, none of it is, but if you watch the ads for memory foam pads it seems clear they want you to think that it is.  A memory foam pad is probably not going to eliminate back pain for good or turn a chronic insomniac into someone that sleeps like a baby every night, but it may help.  Yes, the material was in fact developed by NASA, but that doesn’t really mean anything and just serves as a way to make memory foam pads sound really spiffy.

Having said that, I’ve been getting more and more interested in the idea of a memory foam pad lately.  I have to admit, they have kind of lured me in with their advertising.  Mostly, I’m referring to the ads I’ve been seeing on TV for the folks over at Tempur-Pedic, but there are some competitors out there that sell memory foam pads that look just as attractive.  I have in fact noticed a lot of neck and back pain lately, and I can’t help but feel my crummy spring mattress isn’t at least partly to blame.

While I like the idea of a memory foam mattress, a memory foam pad may be a more cost effective way of getting the same result.  A memory foam pad just slips right over whatever mattress you already own, and is a heck of a lot cheaper than a whole mattress.  I’m not really sure if it works as well as the mattress, but having a memory foam pad may be a good way to tell if the material is worth sleeping on.  I have tried a memory foam pillow already, from Tempur-Pedic and I love it, so there may be a memory foam pad or memory foam mattress in my near future.  If nothing else, I can bring my memory foam pad with me on camping trips!

A good futon can be the most important piece of furniture for a wide range of people, especially students or those living in small apartments.  In fact, the humble futon is perhaps the patron saint of the studio apartment, as it lets you seamlessly combine the bed and the couch.  The futon’s shabby cousins, the foldaway bed, the Murphy bed and the hide-a-bed couch all took a stab at blending the bedroom and the living room, but none of them have the ease or the elegance of the futon.

The New York studio apartment is a unique beast.  It’s much smaller and much more expensive than any of it’s studio cousins in LA or Chicago, generally forcing it’s sometimes grumpy, usually cramped occupant to spend her waking, home bound hours stuck in one room.  A good futon finally makes this existence a little more livable.  The studio dweller can spend the day on a comfortable couch, lounging about, maybe reading a book.  Then when it’s time for bed easily slide down the back of the futon and turn it into a comfortable bed.  All it takes is a blanket thrown over the top of it and it’s ready to go.

A futon mattress can really make or break your futon, especially if you plan on sleeping on the thing every night.  Wherever you buy your futon, be sure to try it out for awhile with the futon in the down “bed” position to make sure there aren’t any uncomfortable ridges or lumps.  Though most often an uncomfortable futon is uncomfortable due to a poor mattress, sometimes the frame is to blame, especially if the bed tilts one way or the other or is particularly high or low in the middle.  Any of these problems can cause a lot of long nights.

When you finally settle on a futon, bring it home and dress it up.  Many queen mattress covers fit futons well, so you can keep some sheets on the futon even when it’s in the up position.  A few throw pillows will spruce things up nicely and will keep your futon from looking like it belongs in a college dorm, even if you are, in fact, in a college dorm.  Whether you’re using your futon for your own bed every night, as a guest bed, or as the occasional place for your drunken roommate to crash, it’ll be more comfortable than the hide-a-bed and prettier than the ugly army cot your dad still hangs onto.

Eventually it comes time for all of us to decorate or redecorate.  You may be finally moving away from home or to a new city, or you’ve gotten sick of all of the furniture from your first move that’s been sitting around, getting stained and banged up for the last 20 years.  Once you start looking for furniture, you’re going to realize pretty quickly that there are a lot of choices out there.  Walking into one of those furniture warehouses is an intimidating task, with acres and acres of overstuffed sofas and dining room table sets laid out before you.  It’s hard to have an idea of what you want, and even harder to get some sort of a sense of what pieces of furniture are going to go together well and which ones would make it look like a furniture store exploded in your living room.

One type of design that is becoming increasingly popular is contemporary furniture.  Though some contemporary furniture looks like it belongs with the Jetsons, full of weird, curving lines and pod shaped chairs, not all contemporary furniture is so space age.  In fact, though contemporary furniture designs were inspired by science fiction during the space race days, things have changed quite a bit since then.  Today’s contemporary furniture is identified by clean lines and simple, elegant designs.  Furniture giant Ikea founded much of it’s business and reputation on marketing simple, easy-to-assemble, clean-lined contemporary furniture.  One of the big advantages of this style is that it’s easy to mix and match different designs while still coordinating an entire room.  Since the pieces often don’t have a lot of color on their own, they can be easy accessorized with different splashes of color to bring together an entire room.  When you get tired of the color combination, you don’t have to get rid of your furniture, you just need to change up the accents.

Contemporary furniture also tends to add an attractive lightness to living spaces, which is especially apparent in small apartments and other cramped living spaces.  By focusing on lightness and crisp lines, contemporary furniture opens up small spaces and bring more light into living areas.  Contemporary designs also mesh well with older more traditional designs, allowing you to change the layout and feel of a room without replacing every last stick of furniture.  Even a couple clean, modern pieces will add a completely new look to a living or dining room, giving you that change you’ve been looking for.

Memory foam mattresses have got to be one of the finest thing ever indirectly invented and created by God, who if he made anything more luxurious for sleeping must have kept it to himself. This I decided the very first time I ever touched one, never mind laid down on one. I had seen the commercials on television for these remarkable memory foam mattresses that when the advertising model put a hand on would hold and keep the shape of her hand.
But I had also seen many ads for other products that had been magically depicted but misguiding. I also knew of a number of tricks the advertisers can get away with, not including subliminal and shafty techniques. For example, in the before and after ads for diet pills and products, the advertisers simply SWITCHed the photos and captions. So the beautiful and bodacious babe who USED TO BE thin has the “AFTER” label, while the five kids later worn out woman in huge sweats cause they are the only thing that fits photo holds the “BEFORE” caption. Finally, knowing how we consumers just love to be tricked, gullible as we are to spend the money that is burning a hole in the pocket or pocketbook, I ignored the memory foam mattresses.

But one week a few years later, I was in need of an ergonomically correct office chair. So I did my research online and drove to a local city where there was a well known store that was recommended as reliable and as being owned by people who returned your dough if you were not satisfied. While the manager was busy with a customer who had come in before me, I looked around the small store. Taking in the relaxing smells of the aromatherapy products, considering alternatives to office chairs that heated up or vibrated, and checking out the less trafficked corners of this mom and pop place. There in a back corner was a bedroom display with a sign for the memory foam mattresses. I skeptically approached. I leaned in. I touched. Oh. My. God. The almost Jello combined with whipped cream and material embraced my hand. The imprint stayed. I wanted to lay down on it and take a nap right then and there. I wanted to roll my backside over it. Hell, I wanted to push my face down into the stuff just for kicks, just for results, just for that huggy feeling.