August 12th, 2019

Today's blog is going to sound a little like a commercial. I apologize for that. But I know that Tim is not the only person on the planet with this issue so try to think of it more as a Public Service Announcement.   :)

One of the oldest comedic "bits" I remember hearing was about a couple who were mismatched temperature-wise.  She was always too cold and he was always too hot.  They referred to it as "The battle of the thermostat". 

Tim and I  live that joke every day of our lives together.  Well except for the part about fighting over the thermostat.  We don't do that.  And honestly, when it's happening to you, it's not all that funny.

I am almost always too chilly.  Uncomfortably cool I call it.  Even on the hottest days of summer, in air conditioning, I am too cold.  I always bring a sweater with me when shopping or eating at a restaurant.  I am more grateful than words can express that we have separate temp zones in the car so that I can do as I like on my side. And frequently at the end of the day when we are watching TV, even in the dog days of summer, I am snuggled under a sofa blanket.  Crazy right? 

On Tim's side of things, regardless of the temperature, in spite of the time of year and no matter the weather, Tim is always too warm. He is absolutely lovely to stand next to when it's cold out because he radiates heat. He wears shorts year 'round.  He can sweat while showering! For the most part he has found ways to adapt to having a higher than normal internal temperature.  He manages fine all year long, but in summer it can be a bit of a struggle.  He never complains, so I suppose he has just gotten accustomed to always being too warm the same way I am used to always being too cool.  But there are times when it is just too much. And that is generally when he is trying to sleep.

We keep the house fairly cool between the ceiling fans in every room, the air conditioning and keeping the blinds down on the sunniest windows.  The tile floors help too.  But all that fabric on a bed, the mattress, the sheets, the pillows, still made him miserable even with an extra box fan blowing right on him at night. It had gotten to the point where he wasn't really sleeping very much and I felt so awful for him. Poor baby!  So we began looking for other options.

If this sounds like anything at all familiar to you take heart because I think we may have found a solution!

It's called an Ooler and it's made by a company called chili.  And, so far,  it is amazing.  Tim did his research first of course.  We talked about it at length. I urged him to give it a try.  So finally he ordered it.  There was a bit of a wait between order and arrival but I think it was worth the wait.

The Ooler itself is thin.  It is sort of like a two sheets sewn together and quilted with very thin tubing inside.  Although they come in every bed size a person might like, Tim ordered just a twin size and we put it only on his side of the bed because I'm perfectly comfortable already on my side.​

See?  There it is right down one side of the bed.  It sits under the fitted sheet and therefore it is completely invisible (as if that mattered).  Cooled water circulates through that thin tubing throughout the night keeping Tim's side of the bed comfortable for him (I would be freezing).  There is obviously a unit that powers and cools the circulating water but that is small and fits right under Tim's side of the bed.

It does make a humming noise while it's working. Yes it does.  But since Tim always has that box fan blowing all night anyway, it absolutely drowns out any additional noise made by this Ooler unit.  It's just a "white noise" kind of sound. Easily ignored.

I was more concerned about the tubing.  Would that be uncomfortable to sleep on?  Reports from Tim indicate that he doesn't even notice it. Hurrah!

Tim has it programmed to turn on at 9 pm so that the bed is already cooled off when we finally turn in.  And then he also has it programmed to turn off in the morning about a half hour before he has to get up.  The gradually warming of the bed kind of gently wakes him up before the alarm goes off.  Bonus!

But of course, the most important part was, Does It Work?

The answer is, Yes It Does!  Instead of waking up a thousand times in the night to toss and turn and flip his pillow, feeling as if he was drowning in a pool of his own sweat in the night, he is comfortable and cool and, most importantly, sleeping ever so much better!

And if appearances matter... well, they don't,  but if they do, here are before and after photos.  The photo on the left is our bed before the Ooler. The photo on the right is after the Ooler. No difference visually at all.

One of the reasons we were comfortable investing in this product is that we could return it if it didn't work. That definitely made us feel better about making the jump.  But mostly I think it was a matter of we have to do something!  This was something we could do. 

Honestly there are few things more important than a good nights sleep.  

​My final word on this?  The Ooler is cooler.  Literally!