Your bed alone, if it is averagely clean, averagely old, averagely dimensioned, and turned averagely often {which is to say almost never} is likely to be home to some two million tiny bed mites, too small to be seen with the naked eye but unquestionably there. It has been calculated that if your pillow is six years old {which is the average age for a pillow}, one-tenth of its weight will be made up of sloughed skin, living and dead mites, and mite dung-or frass, as it is known to entomologists.
In Bill Bryson's "At Home: A Short History of Private Life," he highlights an unsettling fact about our bedding. Even a moderately maintained bed can harbor around two million microscopic bed mites that are invisible to the naked eye. This indicates how much of the environment we live in is teeming with life, even in places we consider clean or safe, like our own beds.
Furthermore, Bryson sheds light on the surprising composition of an old pillow. Over an average span of six years, a pillow can accumulate a significant amount of materials from our bodies, including skin particles and mite waste. This reveals the hidden aspects of our daily lives and the realities of domestic spaces, prompting reflection on cleanliness and the unseen realities we coexist with.
