Friday 17 December 2010

Bean Bags

Bean bag in book corner. Nice.


I have spent a ridiculous amount of my life looking for decent bean bags for my children (or anyone). I mean, how fucking hard can it be to make a bean bag that is covered in a fabric that's 

a) washable
b) stylish?

The colours offered are either sickly pastels, stripey, spotty, or the fabric is not washable. This is utterly pointless.

Everyone has let me down in this department. Letterbox, the GLTC, Vertbaudet, John Lewis.

I did buy one a few years ago for my firstborn, it was an okay blue (not lovely dark navy which would be sensible, but still) and it came in very soft elephant cord. It was washable. So what's your fucking problem I hear you ask? Well 

a) it was fairly small
b) we can't find it. It's not that small, not so small it's lose-able for normal people, but we lost it in a box somewhere and we have too many outbuildings where said box could be. So have no sympathy.

What I really wanted, what I've always wanted, was a chocolate brown corduroy bean bag that was washable. It shouldn't have been difficult to find, but it was.

I found one, but it took me ages. Of course what I should have done, ages ago, was just put "chocolate brown corduroy beanbag" into Google. But I didn't. I went through the usual channels of looking at sites I knew. And every few months I'd renew the search, hoping the buyers would have seen sense.

Every few months I was disappointed. So eventually I did just that, I put 'chocolate brown corduroy beanbag" into Google, worked my way through the rubbish and found the site I link to below.

I rang them up to make sure it was a credible site - insofar as you can ascertain these things from a phone call - and ordered it.

It was about double what I wanted to spend and if you're handy with a needle you could probably make your own, but I really had no desire to. It's enough, okay, that I make my own sodding bath bombs, bread, ice cream, granola, milk and keep chickens. I don't want to start wrestling with millions of polystyrene balls. 

Anyway it's excellent: the quality is lovely and if you pay for the "platinum upgrade" (don't you love the title) you get an inner bag that houses the balls so you can just unzip the outer cover when you want to wash it. Why this isn't standard, I don't know. Why anyone would want a zip off cover that opens directly onto the stuffing, I don't know.

The size is good cos it's perfect for what I wanted: for growing children, for me to sit on with a child on my lap. But it's not too big. It needs to settle down a bit as it's very 'full'. But already my children love it and it sits in their book corner which is really draughty but the bean bag keeps them kinda warm.

Don't waste half your life looking for a stylish bean bag. Get one here. I got the Brat Bag style/size.

2 comments:

Mrs Dee said...

Just wanted to let you know that I ended up buying two beanbags (plain cotton-covered) from this site as a result of your recommendation, and I'm so pleased. Super quick delivery, very good quality beanbags, and I love how they sent me a survey to rate their service/products immediately after my order was received. It shows that they actually care about what their customers think! Thanks for the tip!

Annalisa Barbieri said...

Dahling I'm thrilled. I love our beanbag.