No sooner have you cracked the sleeping thing with your child and actually – ahhhhh –getting a solid 6 or 7 hours a night then you’re on to the next stage – sleepovers! For me, a mum of two, it was K’s entry into the Big Girl World of pyjama parties and midnight feasts – and, consequently, her requests for a bunk bed of her own – that first breathed life into the idea of The Bunk Pod.
A little sleep can be a dangerous thing I guess. On fewer zzzs, I might have caved in and bought a piece with which I wasn’t entirely enamoured, but which served her purposes well enough. But, as someone who’s always been a bit of what you might call a design junkie, I looked at what was out there … and just didn’t quite like any of it enough to have it in our home. So my partner and I decided to design our own.
That was almost 9 months ago and, with the prototype due to be with us this month, this makes IO Kids about as close to a third child as I plan on getting (did I mention sleep? I am quite fond of it).
With two growing girls of my own, I’ve become acutely aware of the fact that the needs of children change and evolve rapidly, so each Bunk Pod has been designed to adapt to your child’s changing needs, giving them, we believe, a good smattering of brownie points in the eco-friendly stakes. We’ve also chosen plywood for its construction, as it’s a material resilient and durable enough to withstand the years of use we envisage the Bunk Pod getting. The laminated layer will provide further protection from damage making it more long lasting. And since family was at the heart of my idea, it has also been brilliant and reassuring for me to know that our manufacturer is a small, family-run factory.
Which brings me back to the children. All very well that I’ve had a chance to flex my itching-to-be-used design muscles in the creation of the Bunk Pod, and crucial, of course, that the clean, uncluttered lines of the product will appeal to an adult aesthetic – but what of my – and your – kids? Whether a bunk bed is on the wish list because of room sharing or sleepovers, we believe that IOKids Design, both as a product and as a concept, holds as much charm for the youngsters as it does for the grownups, with each piece from the range arriving with its own IOK – an origami bird that you and your child can have fun crafting together. And if you fancy getting to know the IOK family a little better right now, simply download and print the doodles that we’ve included with this blog post – there will be a new one with every new instalment. See you next time!