Weighted Blankets: Good, Bad or Eh?

These days when you want to buy something, you really just need to send a message to a friend or make a post on Facebook saying what you are looking for. Then within about an hour, you’ll be served ad after ad after ad on your Facebook news feed that are all different versions of what you are looking for.

For me, I love being served ads like this. It helps me to do more research on what I’m looking to buy anyway.

The past year during the pandemic, I have developed some severe anxiety.

I kept reading that there was a possibility that a weighted blanket can help with anxiety. So I took some time over a few weeks and did some research on weighted blankets.

I also had a few requirements with the blanket that I was possibly going to purchase.

1. My blanket had to come with a duvet cover because I have 2 cats who still have their claws. This cover would both protect the blanket from any of their possible tears and leaking the glass beads all over the place (not a problem I actually needed to have) and a duvet cover can be cleaned in the washer, whereas the blanket itself can’t be.
2. The blanket had to have small enough pockets and really good stitching that the beads didn’t all go to one side or end.

I spent a few weeks looking through what seemed like hundreds of weighted blankets on Amazon before I finally pulled the trigger to buy one.

But then there were other questions I had too:

• What size blanket do I want - twin, full, queen, king?
• What weight do I want? (I had no idea what this meant before any of the research started.)
• Was color important?
• How does the blanket actually help with anxiety?
• Does it really feel like a hug when you use it?
• Is it a super warm blanket?

When I cut down the blankets that made the final list because they came with a duvet cover, I still had to keep searching for my second requirement of the small enough pockets. This one was much harder to find. Most of the blankets had 4 or 5 inch pockets. But I finally found one with 2.5 inch pockets and I knew that was the one.

The reviews on Amazon would sway me one way or another on which blankets made the shortlist and which ones were axed completely.

My Blanket Arrived

After I finally decided on and ordered my blanket, the 2 day wait felt like weeks.

I have no idea what I was expecting, but it was much heavier than I thought it would be. Yes, it’s a weighted blanket, and I got the 20 pound one, but since I’d never had one before, I wasn’t expecting it to weigh as much as it did, I guess.

And of course, I had to try it as soon as I got it out of the packaging.

It was heaven!

I really felt like I was being wrapped in a full body hug with the blanket wrapped around me. It also really calmed me down almost instantly.

Suffice it to say, the blanket really does help with my anxiety. Whenever I feel like I’m in so much anxiety that I don’t know how to get out of it, I just need to wrap myself up in my blanket for a good 10 minutes and I feel so much better.

But the Bad…

Yes there was still a bad part to the blanket. It was way too warm. But it was only too warm for me while I was sleeping.

I tried to use it to sleep that first night. But I woke up about an hour after going to bed because I was way too hot. I can’t sleep when I’m too hot, and no sleep means my anxiety gets even worse. So the blanket could only be used during the day.

I was actually really sad about the fact that it was way too warm for me to use while sleeping because it actually helped me fall asleep much quicker and feel more relaxed while sleeping.

And the eh…

The reviews on Amazon for the blanket I got all stated that they were happy how the beads stayed in place in their squares.

In my blanket they have not all stayed in place.

The blanket has multiple rows across it that go from top to bottom. When the blanket arrived, these rows were empty, then the little squares were where all of the beads were.

After a month of use, just about all of the beads have shifted to those rows and are no longer in the squares. Since there are multiple rows across the entire blanket, this means that all of the beads haven’t shifted to the outside and still does the job it was meant to do.

There isn’t much that you can expect though when the beads are so small and you can only get so close with the stitching when you sew.

My Overall Thoughts

I do love my weighted blanket. I’m glad I spent some time doing research before actually getting the blanket and not just impulse buying like I usually do.

I’m still sad that it is way too warm to use while I sleep, but I do use it every day and it helps keep me calm.

If I am having any sort of anxiety, I just need to be wrapped up in the blanket to help relax my anxiety. It really does work.

My beads have shifted from their original place in the blanket when I first got it, but they aren’t all on the outside edges like many of the other blankets I reviewed said happened to them.

I’m very happy with my purchase and it was very worth the money I spent on it.