What’s In My Bedside Table?

“Hey! I wonder what kind of random crap Amber keeps in her bedside table?” … said no one ever.

The thing is, though, I’m kinda nosey. Like, the kind of nosey that if I could have a superpower, I would definitely pick invisibility, just so I could walk around other people’s houses without them knowing I was there. (Yes, I’ve thought about it. I was going to go for flying, but I’m scared of heights, so that’s probably not a good idea…) I feel like I’m making you all uncomfortable now, though, so as I was saying, I’m pretty nosey, so I really enjoy these posts when I see them other people’s blogs, and I thought some of you might enjoy them too. Please tell me there’s someone out there who’s as inherently nosey as I am? If so, then this post’s for you, whoever you are.

So! Here’s the dressing table in question, which is called ‘Nordli‘:

That’s not MY name for it, by the way (I think it looks more like an ‘Allan’, personally, but what would I know?): it’s Ikea’s – because yes, the bedside table is from Ikea, obviously. I HAVE heard rumours that there are other furniture stores in the world, but I don’t think that can be true, because why would there be? (Mine isn’t the version with the wireless charging surface, unfortunately, which is very sad: I think they released that after I got mine or something.) This is actually the first bedside table I’ve owned since I moved out of my parents’ house: there wasn’t enough space for one in our last bedroom, so I just had to use the top of the laundry basket, like some kind of savage. Because of that, although this table is fairly small, it still feels like a complete luxury to me… and because it’s from Ikea, it’s quite cunningly designed, to maximise the storage. Which is why I love Ikea, basically.

Here’s what’s normally on top of it:

So, full disclosure: I didn’t add or remove anything from the inside of the cabinet, but I DID put these flowers on the top, to pretty it up. Because I’m a blogger: it’s what we do. Well, how ELSE am I supposed to Instagram this stuff? With that said, I do regularly buy flowers, which I keep in that spot: I move them to the window when I go to bed (otherwise I’d wake up covered in roses, and that would be weird…), but that’s where they live during the day. In more permanent residence on top of the nightstand are…

L-R: My Kindle; plastic stand for my phone ; mason jar for water; glasses; phone

The glass jar was a Christmas gift from my parents, and it really came in handy when I spent December coughing and spluttering, and had to sit up every two minutes to take a sip of water. Because it has a lid and a straw, I’m less likely to spill it than I would be if it was a regular glass: I spill things even at the best of times, let alone in the middle of the night, so I need all the help I can get, really. Now I’m feeling better, I keep it next to my bed purely to make sure I won’t be thirsty during the night: I figured out a long time ago that if I have a glass of water next to my bed, I’ll almost never have to drink from it, but the moment I forget to leave it there, I’ll wake up with a raging thirst – it never fails.

The stand for my phone, meanwhile, actually came out of a Christmas cracker, believe it or not: I use my phone as an alarm, so I was pleasantly surprised to actually get something useful from one of those things. The Kindle and glasses, meanwhile, are… a Kindle and glasses. I don’t need to explain those, really, do I?

Let’s look inside the drawer, because I know you’re dying to…

The plastic tray came with the unit: one side holds my watch collection, which I wrote about last week (I have no idea why I keep my watches there: I think it’s probably just that I take them off before bed, and that’s where they all ended up?), plus a tube of hand cream – because you never know when you’ll have a “dry hands” emergency in the middle of the night, do you? On the other side, meanwhile, I have the backup battery for my phone, some lip balm, and a whole lot of nasal spray – because, hey, did I mention I was ill in December? I was ill in December. And now I know what happened to all the nasal spray we had, and which Terry kept asking me about when it was HIS turn to get sick. Whoops.

That tray is removable, and when you lift it out, you find more storage underneath it. More storage, which I’ve chosen to fill with…

… a whole lot of random crap! Including Pinkie, my stress toy (I’m not really anticipating any middle-of-the-night panics, you understand – I just keep him there because once you designate something as a “stress toy”, you open yourself up to a whole world of NEW stress, because every few minutes you find yourself going, “OMG, WHERE’S PINKIE?!” Well, this is where Pinkie is, Amber: you can stop worrying now. Maybe also stop talking about yourself in the 3rd person, yeah?), another tube of hand cream, and some random plug adaptors and chargers for various electrical items. I feel like my entire house is full of chargers for electrical items, actually: I’m constantly opening drawers, or lifting something up, only to find an entire family or chargers living inside/underneath it, almost as if they’re breeding or something. And yet I can never find a charger when I need one: funny, that.

(I store all this stuff in the lid of an old Birchbox: my kitchen cabinets are also full of these. They drive Terry mad, but they make everything neater, so the boxes stay.)

The plastic tubs, meanwhile, were also from Ikea, and they also hold a bunch of random stuff that didn’t have a designated space until I bought this cabinet. It’s probably a bit strange that I keep them here, now I come to think of it, because they’re not all “night-time” specific, but it made sense to me at the time, so I just went with it. So I have one for hair elastics, two for various types of hair grips/clips, one for ear plugs (I have a large collection of these, because I’m a special snowflake, who can’t abide noise of any kind when I’m trying to sleep. Also because I keep losing them, then finding them again in the fridge, or some other place they absolutely should not be.), and there’s also another two, which you can’t see in the photo. One contains a vast collection of lip balms (what can I say, I don’t want to risk my lips getting dry in the night. WHO WOULD?), and the other has a bunch of hair accessories, which I’d totally forgotten I even owned, until I decided to do this post. I’d rather have found money, to be honest, but hair accessories are good, too.

We’re still not done yet, though. Sorry. As you can see, the cabinet also has a shelf, and on that shelf is…

MORE CHARGERS. So THAT’S where they all were! TERRY, I HAVE FOUND ALL THE CHARGERS! YAY! The container is also from Ikea (Didn’t even need to type that, did I?): honestly, I would put MYSELF inside a plastic Ikea storage box if I possibly could. Love ’em.

Next to them (I’m almost done, I promise…):

Notebooks, two of. Like most people who write, I’m always getting ideas in the middle of the night, and making sure I have these close at hand is an easy way to guarantee that never happens – a bit like how the water is there to make sure I never feel thirsty. Even so, without these notebooks to be the lucky recipients of my thoughts, this post might not even exist – and wouldn’t that be a TRAGEDY?

Finally:

Painkillers and throat lozenges. Because DID I MENTION I WAS SICK? And that I haven’t cleaned out my bedside cabinet since then?

This post was NOT sponsored by either Ikea or Tesco, by the way: it was just sponsored by me and my bright idea to photograph the contents of my bedside table. I don’t actually know why I did it now, but hey: at least one day when I’m old, I’ll be able to look back and say, “Ooh, remember that lip balm I used to keep in my nightstand?” And that’ll be… nice. I guess.