In a blog series we're calling "Weekly Innovation," we'll explore an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet. Last week we featured the sink-urinal. (Do you have an innovation to share? Use this quick form.)
You are wasting valuable time when you make your bed in the morning, say designers Jon Wheatley and Marshall Haas. The process of tucking, untangling and realigning the flat sheet that often winds up bunched at your feet can be eliminated, they say, with their new sheet set called Smart Bedding.
Smart Bedding includes a top sheet and a duvet cover that connect at the edges using a snap system. You would still sleep under the sheet — this isn't a sleeping bag. The innovation comes in preventing that flat sheet from bunching up or becoming a hassle to straighten out when making the bed. If this works as promised, making the bed will only require flattening the duvet.
"In our tests, each day it takes around 90 seconds to make a bed with regular bedding. Making your bed with Smart Bedding takes less than 2 seconds. Add it all up, and you'll save over 30 days worth of time over your life," write the designers, on a current Kickstarter campaign for the product.
The bedding set will come in four colors — red, blue, gray or white — and available to purchase as a three-piece set or a seven-piece set. Sheets are 100 percent cotton, but the thread count isn't mentioned. (We're waiting to hear back from Haas and Wheatley.)
Production has yet to begin; the founders are hoping to raise the $10,000 they're asking for via Kickstarter to start making these sheets. Those who pledge at least $89 will receive a Smart Bedding set in return. "Our manufacturing partner in Asia is lined up and ready to make these to our specs. As soon as the project ends and we've received the funds, we'll get to work," Haas and Wheatley write.
Smart Bedding is not meant to be confused with OHEA's Smart Bed, the automated bed with mechanical arms on each side that makes your bed for you. The Smart Bed design is already available commercially. It comes with its own sheet and duvet set to work with the built-in automation, so combining Smart Bedding on a Smart Bed is impossible. Sorry.
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