{"id":8402,"date":"2025-07-22T20:52:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=8402"},"modified":"2025-07-22T20:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T01:10:11","slug":"sleep-fan-shares-advice-on-how-to-get-a-bed-der-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/sleep-fan-shares-advice-on-how-to-get-a-bed-der-rest\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleep fan shares advice on how to get a \u2018bed-der\u2019 rest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, I woke up in my dorm room and realized I was actually comfortable sleeping in a college bed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier, that felt impossible. For the first two weeks, I learned Jones Hall is a BYOP (bring your own pillow) place. I didn\u2019t know. So I stuffed spare bed sheets into a pillowcase and made do, sleeping on the standard-issue Twin XL mattress. No topper, no padding, just me and the springs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Between chasing down interviews and writing my feature story, I was too exhausted to care about comfort. I collapsed into bed each night with freezing cold AC blasting, telling myself: This is just dorm life.<\/span><\/p>\n

But after wrapping my story and finally catching my breath, I decided enough was enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

I headed to Target with a goal: Make this bed feel like mine<\/span>.<\/span><\/i> I picked out two blankets \u2013 a smooth, thick outer one to fight off the AC chill, and a softer, fluffy inner one. I grabbed a $3 pillow for my head and a plush, fuzzy one for a cozy touch.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then came the real game-changer: a $12 foam mattress topper. It had a textured, \u201cmulti-zoned contour design\u201d that supported the “head, neck, torso, and legs.\u201d Soft but firm. Supportive but gentle. It transformed the bed. Truth in advertising.<\/span><\/p>\n

I splurged on a bottle of Gain Moonlight Breeze detergent. It smelled like lavender and wildflowers \u2013 as if were in the <\/span>Mediterranean<\/span>. I washed everything and let the scent settle into my sheets.<\/span><\/p>\n

That night, as I climbed into bed, I felt amazing.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few days later, I woke up wearing my favorite pajamas and realized: I didn\u2019t just sleep. I rested. That bed, once a cold slab of college-standard misery, was now something I looked forward to returning to.<\/span><\/p>\n

With less than $30, a little layering and some lavender-scented care, Jones Hall became (almost) a luxurious place to sleep.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer dorm transformation: $30 Target run turned miserable bed into cozy sanctuary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":7928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[481],"class_list":["post-8402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":481,"user_id":271,"is_guest":0,"slug":"zihaowang","display_name":"Zihao Wang","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7732c4e09e59ba033bc6defaa59cbb0a7d23960d0c0ce4554f7a7355301d111d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"Wang","first_name":"Zihao","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8402"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9792,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8402\/revisions\/9792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8402"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}