I just ran through the online Ikea mattress recommender. It offered many helpful suggestions but did not recommend that I purchase the item that I’ve been sleeping on for the last month, the Solsta sofa bed.
That’s probably because the Solsta is not a bed.
Shortly after I arrived here, I had a brief email exchange with Angela, the owner of the boat.
Me: “I do have some issues with the ‘bed’ though — either I don’t know how to operate it, or it is simply not a bed.”
She: “My understanding is that Daniel’s been sleeping on this sofa bed for the last few months?”
So I went searching online for backup. Ikea confirms that it is a ‘sofabed.’ I tried googling certain key phrases like “Solsta: not a bed” and “Ikea Solsta incredibly uncomfortable” and “Ikea solsta permenantly injured houseguest” and “solsta sofa bed open back surgery” These search phrases turned up nothing but the occasional product-review site at which happy consumers rate the Solsta as a good value and give it an average ranking of 5 out of 5 stars.
Curious, since it is marketed as a bed and yet is not a bed. This puts me in an awkward spot. If I could find anyone to back me up on this, I would’ve cheerfully bought an actual bed and deducted the price from my rent. As it is, I’m left feeling like the only sane person in a world gone mad.
Here’s the Solsta in its latent, folded form:
And here it is, unfolded:
So, already you’re getting the idea that ‘unfolding’ really just involves piling the couch cushions on the floor next to the couch. Not so bad — it worked when you were five, right? Here are some close-ups of me standing on the middle and end sections of the bed, respectively:
Notice how part of it gives when I step on it, and the other part doesn’t? In case it’s not totally obvious, I will make you a diagram:
Here, from the product instructions, is a diagram suggesting how I should sleep on this item:
So, the first thought there is, Oh! They’re using the back cushion to cover up the plywood! But, no, the diagram is the other way around. He’s sleeping like this:
Here, the red arrows indicate the point of eventual calf-amputation. Perhaps the man in the Ikea catalog already has two wooden legs, or is only 4′ tall with a deceptively long torso. If he is a normal-sized 4-limbed Swede, then this drawing has captured him moments before he leaps out from under the covers and punches the product designer.
An alternative is to slide the cushion around and actually use it to mitigate the effects of the plywood. That gives us two options:
Here, the red arrow indicates the point of spinal failure.
This is nearly tolerable except there’s some amount of foot-dangling involved, and the plywood provides low enough friction that over the course of an evening I find myself in the above mentioned spinal-failure situation.
So, after a couple of nights of such experimentation I finally ran into Daniel and asked him for advice. His solution (which I’ve stuck with ever since) is this:
I would NEVER have thought of this, but it turns out to be the only non-injurious option. Sure, my feet go numb from the elevation and I end up curled in the fetal position by morning, but it does prevent permanent injury.
In case you think that I’m merely growing soft in my middle-age, I feel a need to mention that when in college I lived in an apartment that contained a similar piece of furniture — a foam loveseat that unfolded into a mattress. It, however, was soft for the entire length. And even then, at age 19, I refused to sleep on the thing.
What is going on at Ikea that they think this is a bed? What is going on with the consuming public that they are buying (and, on craigslist, reselling) this item all the while thinking that it is a bed? I have never encountered a product that fails so completely at being the thing that it was intended to be. There should be firings, class-action lawsuits, product recalls. But instead, there’s this, and this. Thanks a lot, internet.