Have a hard time getting out of bed when it’s cold out? This heated dining table is just what you need!

Background:

When the weather is cold, it’s often unappealing to wake up and get out of bed (Figure 1) to start your day.

Fig. 1: This bed is too comfy—it makes the prospect of waking up, getting out of bed, and enduring the cold temperatures much less appealing.

Proposal:

The proposal is simple: a person needs something to look forward to when getting out of bed. This is essentially a “waystation” or “halfway point” of waking up. A person can move from the toasty-warm bed to some sort of decently-warm “medium” point, and can thus acclimatize to the house temperature (without just curling up in bed again).

Specifically, we need something that is less comfortable than a bed, but could still sort of be a bed replacement. The dining table turns out to be perfect for this purpose (Figure 2)!

Fig. 2: The heated dining table can be set by a timer to “preheat” in the morning.

Now, the waking-up process is as follows: leave the bed (this is a crucial step), shamble over to the heated dining table, and finally lay on the dining table until enough energy can be mustered to actually wake up “for real.”

(The dining table is probably sufficiently uncomfortable that a person won’t just fall back asleep on it, at least in most cases.)

Unsuitable Alternatives:

Other furniture initially seems a lot more suitable: for example, a sofa or chair. However, these have the downside of potentially being quite comfortable: it’s important that the dining table is not just a bed replacement.

PROS: Could greatly increase worker productivity in cold climates.

CONS: Might lead to excessive electricity consumption for a rather unclear benefit.