Sometimes after a busy day, remembering you still need to re-make your bed after you’ve washed the sheets can feel like the last straw.
If this sounds like you, spare a thought for our ancestors who slept on straw mattresses. To them, refreshing their mattress each season entailed emptying the ‘tick’ covering of the mattress of the old straw, washing the covering, collecting clean chaff straw from the mill to refill it and then finally sitting down to re-sew the ‘tick’ covering – we wonder if this last task was their final straw equivalent.
Once considered luxurious back in the 15th century, by the 19th century straw mattresses were a common mattress and it’s amazing to think that – until well into the 20th century – many poor people continued to sleep on mattresses made of straw.
When it comes to our need for rest, anything that gets between us and our beds can feel like the final straw. Sometimes the problem can also be that we’re just not that good at planning for tiredness. Instead we pack our evenings with plans and commitments and then wonder why, when these plans and commitments arrive, they can have a ‘last straw’ feel to them.
Don’t let your evenings be full of ‘last straws’. Give yourself time off to relax and unwind for sleep and to slip between the covers to sleep on your handmade Millbrook Beds mattress full of luxurious natural fillings, and not one straw amongst them!