How to care and maintain your futon

I have slept on a Japanese-style futon for a little over 10 years now.

P.S. You can buy an all-cotton futon made in the U.S.! You can’t get better than that.

I prefer sleeping on a futon to sleeping in a bed, mainly for these 10 reasons why sleeping on a minimalist futon is better and I find that it is more fun with my toddler as well when we hang out on the floor and play without any fear of bumping his head or falling off.

Over the years, I have been asked the question of how to care and maintain my futon.

For some reason, people can’t figure out how to take care of a futon but if you ever think about it, how many people take care of a mattress?

Food for thought!

We never think about it, but no one thinks about fluffing, cleaning or washing a mattress although it doesn’t seem to flatten down as much as a futon does.

So here are my tips:

ROTATE & FLUFF YOUR FUTON REGULARLY

Every other month or when we feel it getting too flat, or when we notice the fluff of the cotton migrating from one part to another, we rotate and fluff our futons.

We just move it over to one side so that the cotton migrates to another corner, and you fluff it to get the cotton back into the middle where your body has most likely created a human-shaped flat, fluff-free spot.

VACUUM YOUR FUTON

How most people clean a futon is they flip it over a balcony and then beat the hell out of it with a racket (like a tennis racket), to get rid of the dust and re-fluff it.

My lazy way is to run a vacuum cleaner over the futon on maximum and slowly slide the vacuum all over the futon into every corner to add more air into the futon, and fluff it out with the vacuum.

You will also vacuum a lot out of the futon by removing the dust and debris.

FUTONS WILL FLATTEN OVER TIME

Your futon pad, no matter what you do, will flatten over time. The best thing to do, is to buy another pad and put it on top.

The ONLY PROBLEM WITH THIS is to not pile on the futons. I find that 2 to 3 are the maximum that you can put to pile on top of each other, otherwise it tends to be too thick and I have found it to be more uncomfortable than comfortable.

Even if the fluff has disappeared (long gone after 10+ years on ours!), I find it is still more comfortable if you only put 3 or less futons on top of each other.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH YOUR OLD FUTONS?

Eventually, we will replace these futons with new ones, maybe in another 10 years or so, and use these old futons as a floor pad in the living room for Baby Bun to play on and generally laze around. Kind of like a floor couch.

I AM SOLD! WHERE DO I BUY ONE?

You can buy an all-cotton futon made in the U.S.! You can’t get better than that.