Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 2, 2021

Ok, so you know now I said I didn’t want to turn this column into a stream of petty hot takes?

Well, can we start that from next week? Because I’ve got something to get off my chest: I don’t think I’ll ever be an electric blanket person.  

I mean, sure, electric blankets are great in theory. You turn them on before you go out and when you get home, you’ve got this toasty warm bed waiting for you. That’s a lovely concept. 

It’s a cold, cold world out there. There are robbers and wolves and icy winds and unexpected puddles and people who will make fun of you for your totally normal amount of throw pillows. And when you have to brave the cruel realities of life, it’s nice to know that an electricity-generated warming embrace will be there for you when you finally make it home.

I recently went on a trip to the Stanthorpe region with some friends, wisely choosing what meteorologists were predicting would be the coldest weekend of the year to visit the coldest part of Queensland. Thankfully the house we booked had a fireplace, lots of extra quilts and an electric blanket on every bed. 

And, yes, Stanthorpe is the kind of place that gets so cold it actually looks cold, but I don’t think the electric blankets were necessary. Because every time I use an electric blanket, I have a terrible night’s sleep. 

Growing up, we weren’t an electric blanket household, so it was always a bit of a novelty when I encountered one. I’d turn it on, expecting to have the most comfortable, warm sleep of my life and was always bitterly disappointed.

Maybe I run too hot. Maybe my internal self-regulation system is out of whack. Maybe I’m just out of whack. But they’re just not for me. 

When you go to bed with an electric blanket, you have to make a choice – you either turn it off when you get into bed or keep it on the whole night. I don’t know if there’s a rule about what you’re supposed to do, you just choose what’s right for you. But I would argue that both choices are wrong. 

Whenever I choose to keep the blanket running, I always wake up hot and clammy after a few hours. I have vague worries that my sweat will seep through the blanket, damage the wiring and electrocute me even though I’d assume the manufacturers of electric blankets would account for the dampness of man in designing the device. It’s like that feeling when you force yourself to sit in a hot bath for too long – you start to wonder if you’re slowly cooking yourself. You’re now wondering if you’d be able to smell your own flesh cooking and whether you’d smell like bacon and there goes your restful night’s sleep. 

The other option is turning the blanket off as you crawl into bed. Sure, you won’t overheat in the middle of the night and there will be no cannibalistic musings, but you’re still in for a rough trot. Because when you go to sleep, you’ll be doing so at a temperature that doesn’t require many layers on top. But that temperature is temporary. Soon you’ll cool off and eventually wake up shivering and cursing yourself for poorly insulating your body from the cold. This could also lead you down a thought path about how even your electric bed warmer won’t keep you warm at night and then you’ll start thinking about the folly of man’s reliance on machines and that will lead you on to your inevitable and inescapable loneliness and, look, no one wants to be thinking about at any hour of the night. 

I’ve been through that and now that I’m of an age where I’m too old to have a quarter-life crisis, I like to think I’ve learned from my experiences. 

So when faced with the option of using an electric blanket, I decided not to switch it on. 

I was very smug when my two other roommates (we may have been fancy enough to go to wineries, but we weren’t too fancy to share rooms) complained about being too warm with their electric blankets. And I quietly and respectfully agreed with them that electric blankets can be a bit much. Not that I’m the kind of person to bang on about my opinions on such matters…