Bonus points for a towel on exercise equipment

December 24, 2015 2:52 PM

Sleeping under an original My Little Pony single bed set tonight? Or sharing with your uncle and the Christmas tree? Or bedding down in the garage, next to the punch bag? For the last few years Rhodri Marsden has been sharing the people of Twitter's Christmas eve sleeping arrangements, in all their awkward, makeshift, regressive glory. You can view this year's on his timeline @rhodri.
posted by Helga-woo (53 comments total)

This is probably my favorite internet Christmas tradition. There is something about an air mattress wedged in between a sewing table and an overstuffed bookshelf with a 17" television on it that screams family Christmas to me.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:29 PM on December 24, 2015 [17 favorites]

When visiting my parents for thanksgiving with my sister, her husband, her three kids, my dog and my husband - we got assigned the basement (it has direct access outside for the dog, our own shower/bathroom etc etc) but it doesn't have a bed. So me and my husband slept on a single day bed with a trundle bed pushed up against it.

I looked my mom in the eye and said "you know I'm already pregnant, right?"
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 3:34 PM on December 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

I get a sleeping bag and a couch tonight. At least it's a really comfortable couch.

Merry Christmas everyone.
posted by dazed_one at 3:40 PM on December 24, 2015

Maybe I'm showing my age, but the photos looked cozy and charming to me.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:41 PM on December 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

Are you sure you've got enough room in there Dip Flash?
posted by Helga-woo at 3:44 PM on December 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Those are some freaking English interiors and set ups let me tell yu
posted by The Whelk at 3:44 PM on December 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

I think cosy and charming is mostly the point, with a healthy side serving of practicality.
posted by Helga-woo at 3:48 PM on December 24, 2015

My mom was upset when we started staying at a nearby Sommerset Suites but sleeping on a single bed in a dusty 100F degree house was killing me.
posted by octothorpe at 3:48 PM on December 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is actually the oldest Christmas tradition.

After all, didn't Joseph and Mary get shoved out in the manger with the camel and the sheep?<sup>*

*And at least one lobster, according to my viewing of certain holiday classics...</sup>
posted by madajb at 3:56 PM on December 24, 2015 [27 favorites]

For the first time ever, I'm spending Christmas away from my family. I'm excited about spending Christmas with my partner and baby son, but I'm also now feeling sorry for my Forever Friends duvet set not getting its yearly outing. Merry Christmas everyone!
posted by threetwentytwo at 4:14 PM on December 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm the oldest in my family and the first to get married. The first Christmas my then-fiancé came home with me, my parents put him in the family room so he'd have some privacy, but that meant everybody sitting in the kitchen staring at each other waiting for him to wake up.

"Mom, he wouldn't mind sleeping on Brother's top bunk, it'd be fine," quoth I.

"Oh no. I don't think we'll make him share a room with your brother until after you're married," she replied.

"But mom, after we're married, won't he get to share a room with me?"

(Long pause as the light dawns) "... I'm going to have to think about it."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:32 PM on December 24, 2015 [49 favorites]

I'm slightly disappointed by the poor showing of passive aggressive twin singles for long-term married couples this year.
posted by Helga-woo at 4:35 PM on December 24, 2015 [23 favorites]

When my husband and I were engaged, we and the rest of my family visited my grandparents. They have 2 open bedrooms upstairs, each with queen-sized beds, and then a finished basement with a pull-out couch. My parents got one of the bedrooms, and my brother got the other. Mr Fig and I went downstairs, where they had set up 2 twin-size air mattresses, each with their own sets of bedding, about 6" apart.
posted by Fig at 5:03 PM on December 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

When we go visit my brother-in-law tomorrow, we're staying in a hotel, like grownups. There's a bar, a pool, a bed big enough for both of us--did I mention there's A BAR?
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:05 PM on December 24, 2015 [21 favorites]

It's not so much that my mom's couch isn't comfortable, it's that it's a small apartment and she wakes up at between 4:00 and 4:30 every morning. Days are never as long as they are at my mom's place. "Isn't it great that we've done so much this morning and it's still only 7:30?"

I just got in last night, and when you take the time zones into account, I think I got up for the day at 1 AM my time today.

Happy holidays, everyone!
posted by teponaztli at 5:52 PM on December 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

I went home in October and I slept on a cot where, unexpectedly, the head and foot bars collapsed in the middle of the night but the middle stayed up. I slept through the action but woke up very uncomfortable.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:24 PM on December 24, 2015 [23 favorites]

That's even worse than the inflatable mattress that slowly deflates overnight and leaves you on the floor by morning.
posted by teponaztli at 6:31 PM on December 24, 2015 [15 favorites]

We sleep in the twin-plus-trundle setup at my in-laws', but only because the other option is a futon in the basement and the Mrs. is afraid there will be too many spiders.

So instead I wake up halfway across the room because the trundle has rolled downhill all night.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:47 PM on December 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Would you say it trundled across the room?
posted by teponaztli at 7:04 PM on December 24, 2015 [33 favorites]

Don't make me come in there
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:07 PM on December 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

My dad has a nice basement room that is sort of multi-purpose book storage and guest room, which my 17 year old little brother has taken over as his own.

I am pretty sure they changed the sheets beforehand but I tried not to think too much about it. I remember what 17 was like.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 7:11 PM on December 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Those photos have made me laugh so hard I started crying and can't stop. I think they're so PERFECTLY middle class the charm is off the charts.

When I took my finance to visit my family in our hometown, my parents put us up in the rec room downstairs on a queen sized air mattress. This would have been fine except it had a leak so on our first morning we woke up on the floor. I offered to go to buy a new one the next day (seems a good thing to keep around, right?) and they refused to let us do that. "Well, just sleep in the spare room!" they said. It has a double bed. My husband and I large people and struggle to share even a king bed without considerable night violence. So faced with the choice of having my punch him repeatedly in the head during each night or sleeping on a concrete floor in the basement, my now husband opted to sleep on the "air bed with no air" and let me take the double upstairs. Reader, I obviously married him as quickly as possible.

The next year my parents came to visit us in our new home for Thanksgiving, where we have two guest rooms. If you think I didn't make one into the greatest guest room that ever existed well, you don't know how far spite can take a person.

We plan to visit them next year and will be sending ahead an Amazon'd air mattress and full set of bedding. I'm not taking any chances.
posted by marylynn at 7:15 PM on December 24, 2015 [16 favorites]

My parents (in their early 70s) arrive for five nights on the 26th. We got rid of the weak, queen-size hide-a-bed this summer, and so this time they wisely accepted my hints and opted for a nearby hotel. We may miss a few late night conversations but they will actually get some rest for once!
posted by wenestvedt at 7:57 PM on December 24, 2015

When faced with a few extra family members at my parents place today I ended up demoted to the 5'5" couch... I looked at that and considered my 6'1" self and immediately went online to book a hotel room. Bonus points for having a shower to myself that doesn't go super hot or super cold depending on the other household members and 10 people in queue.
posted by cirhosis at 7:58 PM on December 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is why I live 10 minutes from my parents and my brother.
posted by signal at 8:11 PM on December 24, 2015

And my in - laws.
posted by signal at 8:11 PM on December 24, 2015

signal: my mother and my inlaws are both a relatively short transit ride away. So tonight we sleep at home; when the subway starts, we'll be at my mother's for breakfast. It's lovely.

turns out marrying someone who went to the same middle and high school as I did (though we didn't meet there) is very convenient.
posted by jb at 8:46 PM on December 24, 2015

In the old family home town, my uncle is a priest at the local Catholic Church which used to have a convent. We would always get put up in the convent which contains a dozen dormitory style rooms decorated extremely sparsely but with plenty of crucifixes and bibles and "when there were one set of footprints it was then that I carried you" prints every where. The place was definitely haunted by the souls of departed nuns. This year I'm at home, my folks are staying in a very comfortable guest room in the basement with a king size bed and my wife and I still have enough privacy to show each other the magic of Christmas if you know what I mean. 2 egg nogs in and the kids are asleep and life is good.

Merry Christmas my little Mefites. May all your gifts be returnable, may the egg nog be graciously spiked, and may the entire Star Wars trilogy run all day on the TV.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:52 PM on December 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

My mom is at my house this year, and she is sleeping on a mattress on the floor (with paw patrol sheets) in my kids' room, where there is a one-year old in a crib and a three-year old in a bed. It's a little cramped but it works. My wife and I are comfy alone in our room.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:51 PM on December 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I used to wet the bed when I was a boy and I was very embarrassed about it. Come Christmas morning my hosts come to fetch me because it's present time! They were very confused when they discovered tiny me wrestling the mattress and all the linen onto the balcony to dry.
posted by adept256 at 10:05 PM on December 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm the furthest away kid (out of me & the step-siblings), so whenever I go home, I get the real guest room. I recommend making your parents miss you.
posted by dame at 10:18 PM on December 24, 2015 [11 favorites]

At my husband's, he's the oldest, so we get the ghost room.
posted by dame at 10:19 PM on December 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

so we get the ghost room

He's quite old, is he?
posted by maxwelton at 10:56 PM on December 24, 2015 [15 favorites]

When I go back to my mom's for Christmas, I stay in the basement bedroom. Which is actually quite nice in most ways, it has a comfy armchair, TV, nicely decorated. Except for... the bed. My mother, who has excellent taste in most ways, falls down on the subject of beds. She replaced the former, ancient but reasonably comfortable bed with a brand new one three years ago, and I was the first person to use it.

I could not fall asleep, despite being desperately tired. I tossed and turned, the mattress somehow always sliding me into an uncomfortable position, or producing a lump in the wrong place. Until on one toss, there was a crack, and my tired, foggy brain found myself sinking into the mattress. I decided I was too tired to deal, and anyway this was more comfortable then it had been, and went to sleep.

The next morning I scrambled out of the depths, flipped the mattress off, and took a look. Now, if you were designing a slat bedframe, how would you do it? Perhaps a single row of slats across the whole frame, so that the weight goes to all sides equally? Or would you do one on each side, both resting on a single slender board running down the middle of the bed, so that the moment an actual human lands on it and pushes down the middle, nearly all the weight is transmitted to that one piece of wood? And if you were reinforcing that piece of wood, what would you do? I'm betting it wouldn't be a single 2x1 piece in the middle of the bed. And if you were depending on that tiny leg of wood, you would probably put braces to either side, so it couldn't wobble, rather than just nail it straight to the crossbar. You'd be much, much smarter than the maker of this bed.

So I went out into the garage, found wood glue and a can of paint that was nearly the right height. I glued and clamped the crosspiece back together, moved the can into place to support the center, and used the broken piece of the poor little middle of the bed leg to bring it up to height. Which improvised fix has survived through three years of guests. But it doesn't make the bed any more comfortable. Result: last night I finally in frustration rolled off the bed, dragged the duvet on top of me, and slept on a floor rug.

I suspect I may do it again, as it is 3 AM and I just got out of bed to read metafilter due to not being able to sleep on the damn mattress.
posted by tavella at 12:02 AM on December 25, 2015 [15 favorites]

Take a picture of that mess and post it please.
Love,
-Santa
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:31 AM on December 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Merry Christmas! I hope you all had a comfy and restful night and lots of lovely gifts from Santa. The Storify is here.
posted by Helga-woo at 2:37 AM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I know its not cool to make torture jokes but the "Guantanamo theme complete with bare interrogation lightbulb" just made me laugh out loud.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 5:46 AM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I posted a pic of my sleeping arrangements to FB, showing a foldout cot dressed with my childhood bedspread set of Empire Strikes Back sheets and pillowcase, it garnered the most likes of anything I've ever put on social media.
posted by FatherDagon at 6:02 AM on December 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't think you can leave that here without a picture FatherDagon...
posted by Helga-woo at 7:35 AM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

All the unheated conservatories are making me cackle really horribly but the real treasure of the series is the guy in the shed under a punch bag.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:14 AM on December 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Some sexy dance music for returning to your childhood bedroom with your SO: (Do It On My) Twin Bed by the Back Home Ballers (transcript with screencaps if the SNL short is region blocked).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:16 AM on December 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

First time we spent the night at his parents house, bunk bed, bottom (full size) bunk. Top bunk was being used for storage. He says, "man I used to lay here and dream of having a hot chick join me." That's great honey but I'm getting my armpit squished against the ladder.
posted by emjaybee at 11:27 AM on December 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Somewhere I have a photo of the bed I slept on when visiting my parents for Christmas as a teenager. It as your perfectly normal hide-a-bed... but the room it was in was so narrow that it unfolded only part way.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:15 PM on December 25, 2015

There was that one time where we stayed in a hotel room and I still ended up somehow stuck on a pull-out couch.
posted by ckape at 2:05 PM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm sleeping on top of the guest bed - not in it - because the sheets are being kept for tomorrow's guests

That's . . . you don't even get a bed! Just, just the IDEA of a bed, but not the actual sleeping in part. Harsh!
posted by chainsofreedom at 2:28 PM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

One thing is going back to your room from when you were a kid, but why the children's bed linen? surely those families must have normal linen??
posted by mumimor at 5:17 PM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

> surely those families must have normal linen??

Kids beds are most likely doubles or twin beds, I'm assuming most adults sleep in queen sized beds or larger. So why buy new sheets for the guest beds when you have perfectly good ones that work? They aren't slept in often so throwing them away seems silly, and the only new sheets that would be coming into the house would probably be for the parents beds.

When I first came home for thanksgiving after being away at school, I discovered my mom had loaned my bedroom mattress to family friends to stage a room as their house was on the market. They had left a "made" bed on the floor consisting of the sheets, my mattress pad, and my pillows.
posted by mrzarquon at 9:02 PM on December 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Grandma's office on the sofabed again, watched over both by generations-old family photos and all my grammarian grandma's Strunk and Whites and similar style guides. She's 93. Her father, whose portrait stares me down, died of natural causes at that age. I hope this isn't the last year in this setup.
posted by gusandrews at 12:10 AM on December 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yes, my mum only recently got rid of our childhood single duvet sets. Even though they haven't owned a single bed for a decade. Because "it's still good bed linen". And "it might be useful one day". (As far as I know it hasn't been...)
posted by Helga-woo at 1:55 AM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

So why buy new sheets for the guest beds when you have perfectly good ones that work?

I think they have been replaced now, but until quite recently the guest sheets at my mother's house were around 40 years old, made of some kind of indestructible poly mix that might have been invented by NASA. For guest beds that might get used once or twice a year there isn't any great call for new linens.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:25 AM on December 26, 2015

I'm on a leaky air mattress on top of a futon. It's really not so bad.
posted by pril at 8:27 AM on December 26, 2015

Helga-woo: "I'm slightly disappointed by the poor showing of passive aggressive twin singles for long-term married couples this year."

Ha! I wish I had gotten a picture of my sleeping arrangement. I was on a twin mattress and box spring, and my boyfriend was on a twin mattress on the floor next to me. He got my old quilt with the smiley-faced fish. Less passive-aggressive and more "the double mattress and frame came with me in the Uhaul when I moved" though.

My brother might win the contest, though, since he got to sleep under a framed watercolor of "[his name] is rockin'" spelled out in electric guitars. I mean, I dunno, I agree he is rockin'
posted by capricorn at 2:39 PM on December 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

The non-childish twin bed linen left for college and went kind of roundabout from there.
posted by ckape at 9:05 PM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]