Is it Time to Change Your Pillow? Let's Find Out!

Well, she has the pillow part right,
but she seems short four walls.

When was the last time you replaced your pillow?

Most people don't pay much attention to their pillows. We might swap one out if we spill something on it, the dog chews it up, or the cat uses it as a claw-sharpener. Beyond that, though, we just don't think about how old our pillows are. Then again, we might run to the other extreme, buying a new pillow every couple of months because the last one we bought was too soft or too hard or too big or too small or too...wrong. Just wrong. So we need another one that turns out to be just as wrong as the last one, but in a completely different way.

The general rule is you should replace your pillow every six months or so if you have one of those $5 Walmart or Target cheapies. If you have a good memory foam pillow, you can go as long as 36 months -- three whole years! -- before you'll need a new one. For most pillows, you can go a couple of years before you should replace it.

But how do you know?

At this point most web sites would give you a whole bunch of tips with links right back to their own pillows, because they're trying to sell you their pillow just as hard as they can. We're not like that here. Oh, don't get us wrong. We do want you to buy a My Butterfly Pillow. We'd love to sell a couple billion of our Smarter Pillows to everyone, everywhere. But we're not going to spam you with links to do it, nor are we going to be super-annoying about asking you to look us over.

We'll just give you a few tips we hope you find helpful, or at least entertaining:

• If your pillow squashes flat every time you put your head on it, it's done and you need a new one. The easy way to tell if you have a dead, flat pillow is to try to fold it in half. If you can fold it easily, it's time to retire it. 
• If your pillow smells...unpleasant, get a new one. Normally, you can wash a pillow cover (and you should! Often!), but over time sweat and makeup and drool and spilled wine gets through the cover into the material of your pillow itself. That stuff can make you very uncomfortable. Worse, it can make you sick. Don't do that to yourself. Just get a new one. 
• If archaeologists keep trying to break in and steal your down pillow because they suspect the feathers inside it came from an actual dinosaur, get a new pillow. But make sure to sell them you old one, because it's probably valuable! 
• If you can't remember the last time you got a new pillow, get a new pillow. Pillows are not that expensive -- not even the really high-quality pillows like you might see for sale at certain helpful pillow-based websites (*coughcough*). If that's not enough, let us say two more words to you: dust mites. Ew.
• If your pillow is made of wood, stone, or jade, please get a new pillow. Also, you may be an ancient Egyptian or Chinese Empress. Check on that, too.

Just remember, your choice of pillow is every bit as important as your choice of mattress, sleep wear, and blankets. Make sure you have a pillow you really like and that you replace it when it no longer gives you the rest you deserve!

I guess when I mentioned the four walls, I
should have specified an actual house.

(Photo Credit: Engin_Akyurt one and two on Pixabay)