9th Mar. 2025
the uncomfortable duvet
Perhaps washing the duvet is such a nuisance because the duvet's structure was made in a form that does not suit washing. In the first place, a duvet is not something that exists to be washed; it exists to be slept under. Without a duvet at night, it is cold. And then comes a cold. The duvet exists to prevent the deterioration of health that follows changes in body temperature. Perhaps the reason it is easier to fall asleep under a duvet is that sleeping that way has long been felt as safe. But if a duvet like this is left unmaintained and used for a long time, it turns into something with hygienic risks—beginning with allergies caused by house dust mites. The grimy feeling that comes from not washing it for a long time, and the discomfort in bed, may be a signal that the problem of hygiene is becoming more serious than the problem of cold. Washing the duvet is a secondary task—done to remove whatever interferes with its primary purpose of being slept under. So it is only natural that a duvet should be made in a form better suited to covering than to washing. It needs to cover the feet, cover the sides, and sometimes even cover the head; and for the feeling of comfort, it needs a certain weight.
Then what about the duvet cover? Unlike the duvet itself, the purpose of a duvet cover can be seen as closer to washing. In my case, it is almost impossible to air-dry the duvet filling in a single day. No matter how good the weather is, even if the outside seems completely dry, the moment it is pulled over me to sleep, dampness starts to rise. Even with a tumble dryer, I have not yet experienced it being fully dried right into the depths of the filling. A damp duvet may be better than an unwashed one for a night, but it would soon become a breeding ground for house dust mites. The duvet cover was invented because washing the duvet filling each time is this difficult. It helps keep the filling from coming into direct contact with the body, and it blocks, to a degree, the seepage of bodily residue into the filling. It dries relatively quickly, so if everything goes well, it can be used again within a day. So it seems reasonable to infer that the duvet cover was made, as an alternative to the duvet's hygienic vulnerability, for the convenience of washing. (Even so, the duvet itself still has to be washed once a quarter.) It also seems to have the purpose of giving a pleasant texture, but since texture can be built directly into the duvet itself—as with a quilted duvet—it is difficult to see that as the duvet cover's primary purpose.
But for something that was made for washing, the duvet cover is still awkward to wash. A duvet can't help being larger than the bed, and putting a duvet cover on top of it was never going to be easy. The fact that a person has to climb inside it and feel stifled also suggests that the duvet is still an object in the middle of an evolutionary process. So it sometimes seems that the duvet cover was not made with precision for a fixed purpose so much as it has taken its current form through makeshift evolution—like the recurrent laryngeal nerve.
Of course, as I have already admitted, this inconvenience may also be due to my low level of technical familiarity. Similarly, clothes are not made for washing, and they are certainly not made in order to be folded. In the past, when I did not fold laundry every day, clothes struck me as remarkably ill-suited to folding. But after I began living alone and became used to it, I realised that makers had, in their own way, been thinking about the problem of washing when they designed clothes. Perhaps, as the people who wash their own clothes came to have more voice in society, their needs were reflected and clothes evolved into those forms. Even so, because of the limits of evolution, folding laundry still remains something I do not want to do.
For the same reason, it is not that the duvet and duvet cover have undergone no evolution at all. Coverless, quilted duvets have been invented, with a light filling that can dry within a day—an attempt to combine the advantages and drawbacks of a filled duvet and a single-layer blanket. There are also duvet sets with fastening ties, designed to prevent the mishap of one corner coming loose again as soon as the opposite corner has been tucked in. Compared with those duvets, mine is clearly better suited to an earlier environment—an environment in which complaints about duvet washing did not rise to the surface.
But looking at the duvets at my parents' house, it is clear that they still have not evolved enough into objects that can be maintained without any discomfort at all. The evolution of the duvet is still in progress. Yet its pace cannot keep up with the pace at which humans and their complaints evolve. The fact that the most common duvet length is still 200 cm is evidence enough that it has not kept up with human evolution. And the fact that, in most households, duvet washing is still not carried out as regularly as washing-up or ordinary laundry shows that the duvet's evolution lags behind the speed at which our complaints evolve.
christmas chocolates
Through the duvet, humans could fall asleep without curling up. The idea of a sleeping space would also have increased psychological stability during sleep and made more economical sleep possible, and this would have brought about important changes in the efficiency of life outside the bed as well. In this way, through the interactions between humans and duvets, humans could evolve through the duvet.
But the change produced by that interaction showed itself more clearly on the duvet's side. The beings that use duvets are humans, and the living creatures within the radius of human life. From that, it follows that the most central influences on the duvet's evolution are humans and the environments around them. Since the duvet first branched off from clothing, it has changed in step with the development of human textile technology. And as the range of materials available expanded according to status and region, the variety of duvets expanded too. As the pursuit of a warmer and more hygienic environment grew stronger, the voices of those who do the washing grew louder, and in response the duvet evolved its form again.
Above the desk in my room at my parents' house, there is a display shelf where I keep the objects I have collected. And now, two and a half years after leaving that house, there is something similar on top of the wardrobe in my flat. It usually holds gifts, things bought while travelling, and things picked up from somewhere after drinking. For example: a teacup, a tin of food, postcards, a tap. Most of them possessed their original use. But the moment they are placed there, they lose that use and begin to sit still. I do not think they are only sitting still, though. I try, in my own way, to think that they maintain a subtle tension among themselves and, under the name of a collection, form a new relationship with me.
Among them there is also a Santa-shaped chocolate I was given at Christmas two years ago, or perhaps three. It wasn't homemade—just the kind sold in a supermarket. I don't eat much chocolate, and it was awkwardly large to eat, and didn't seem as though it would taste particularly special, so I left it somewhere without much thought. Then, at some day—probably while I was tidying the shelves—I put it up on the display shelf. Once it was placed there, the chocolate could no longer serve as chocolate that gets eaten. It has already been left there for at least two years, and I don't know when it happened, but parts of the wrapper have come off here and there, so it has become something that seems as though it should not be eaten. Still, it has not melted perhaps because the room has not been too warm.
From the beginning, this chocolate seems to have been made with a purpose closer to a gift than to food. Its shape is not especially appetising; it seems more like something produced as a Christmas decoration. And because I received it in my first or second Christmas after arriving in London, it was a Santa of a kind of finish I wasn't yet used to. So for me it also carries the image that a souvenir can have. The will contained in this Santa chocolate can be set out in about four parts. First, the will of the producer who decided to produce the raw materials for chocolate meant to be eaten. Second, the will of the chocolate company that decided to process it into something decorative, or into a keepsake. Third, the will of the person who decided to buy it and give it as a gift. And lastly, my will to keep it as part of a collection. In chronological order, the chocolate underwent changes in identity according to the will of each holder. And each change helped make the next holder's will possible. The chocolate carried a narrative built up through the three wills before it reached me; because of those wills, it remained uneaten despite being something edible, and it eventually became an inedible object in a collection.
Changes in an object's role brought about through interaction with its environment occur at the level of individual objects, but they can also be observed in the evolution of an object's "species" itself. As with the Christmas chocolate, it may not be a complete change of role, but something similar can be found in the evolution of the duvet and the duvet cover. The duvet became a distinct kind of object, separating from clothing, because some users gave certain kinds of clothing a role beyond being worn. Behind the emergence of the duvet cover lies a will to remove the role of "laundry" from the duvet filling. And the coverless quilted duvet reflects the desire to stop having to summon the courage to put a duvet cover on.
the erratic user
Compared with the Christmas chocolate, the duvet is a remarkably difficult kind of presence. The Christmas chocolate is a relatively docile object, able to change its role easily in line with the holder's will. Perhaps this is because chocolate has, historically, had room to accumulate a range of social contexts. Like a virus, it may have had a structural flexibility that allowed its form to change within a short period in response to interactions with its environment, and it may have taken that as a survival strategy. By contrast, the duvet resembles a panda. Because it evolved to perform a specialised role within a specialised ecosystem, there are limits to how far it can branch out. The fact that a duvet is such a large object compared with chocolate will also play a part. But it may also be because the duvet is the result of a particular evolution within the ※species§ of clothing—an already highly varied species—in which certain items took on the specialised role of covering.
The duvet is still evolving. If anything, the more difficult problem—the one that does not change and only carries complaints—is me. I want the duvet to comply with my will, but I do not respond to the duvet's changes. I do not even consider the option of buying a duvet that is easier to wash. The discord between the duvet and me may not be due to the duvet's fussiness, but rather to the fact that I am not making the appropriate effort required for interaction with it, or for any shared purpose.
The line of thought may be a little erratic, but, in some respects it may be too much to insist that the objects on the display shelf—Christmas chocolate included—can change their purposes more freely than a duvet can. A teacup is, in principle, for drinking tea; a tin of food is for eating; a postcard exists to be written on and sent. The reason these things became items in a collection, after passing through various stages, is fundamentally that I decided to treat them as a collection and placed them on the shelf. By putting them there, I complied and made the effort required for them to slip out of their original roles, and for the narratives they carried to become their new roles. And in response to that effort—passed on in ways I do not fully notice—they shifted their state.
I am afraid of summoning the courage to wash the duvet. Perhaps it is because I do not want to bear the amount of effort the duvet has made in order to fit itself to me.
