Muji Has a Cushion for That
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Going to Muji stores is a meditative experience for me. I love running my fingers over the perfectly organized pens. I breathe in some of the scented air from the diffuser. I look at the soup bowls and wish I were organized enough to own dedicated soup bowls. I consider buying a dozen soft-covered notebooks in various sizes, and then I always end up in the perfectly organized area set up in the back of the shop with the pastel-hued cushions fluffed up just so.
Ours is not a decorative pillow household — we prefer pillows and cushions to be utilitarian — but I’m drawn to Muji’s cushions because they look like they’re designed for function. Muji has seven cushions, but I set out to test the three that most appealed to me: the Soft Cushion, the Soft Napping Pillow, and the Soft Loop Cushion.
All the cushions I tried have the signature Muji cushion softness and coolness to the touch. The cover material, a combination of polyester and elastane, feels like velour, and you’ll want to keep running your hands over it. The polyester filling is “mochi-like,” as Muji aptly calls it — squishy like memory foam. All of these pillows, while plush, aren’t bulky and space-consuming. They store away quite easily, pushed into backs of closets or drawers, and recover their shape instantly. Muji does warn that scuffing or pilling is possible given the material but I haven’t yet had that issue.
The colors on offer (light beige, salmon pink, pale green, blue, charcoal gray) are quite muted, exactly what you’d expect from Muji. The cushions are all machine-washable. Muji suggests immersing them fully in water before washing, using a laundry net, and air-drying and tumble drying if needed. I largely did not follow their instructions and put the pillows in the washer dry and washed them on a gentle cycle, then tossed them in the dryer, and they were just fine.
For a very specific kind of napper
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I was initially most excited about the Muji Soft Napping Cushion. It felt designed specifically for me. I love napping, and I love napping while lying on my stomach with one arm under my pillow, cradling my head — and this has a cushioned sleeve for exactly that purpose. I tried it in my bed, with one arm out and one in, switching arms depending on which side my head was turned, and did not find it comfortable. The pillow is too small and too tall to use for sleeping in bed. On its website, Muji shows people using the pillow while napping seated at a desk, with both arms tucked into the sleeve. If you’re someone who sleeps this way or resting on the tray table on a plane, this might work for you. The sleeve makes it possible to put a belt or strap through and attach it to a bag to carry around.
While not the right dimensions for sleeping in bed, the Napping Cushion is the perfect size to keep on my lap to rest my laptop, which is how I’ve been using it. It’s solid enough — firmer than the other two cushions I tried, in fact — that my laptop doesn’t sink in.
When I washed this cushion, the inside of the sleeve took some extra time to dry. I ended up pulling it inside out, which was quite difficult to do because of how short the sleeve is, and putting it in the sun for a little while. That did the job, but I didn’t feel like fighting the pillow back into the right side out again, so now the seams connecting the sleeve to the body of the pillow are more visible and all this handling left the pillow lumpier than I would like.
An all-purpose pillow
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The Soft Cushion is the most versatile of the three I tried, and would be the most suitable for incorporating into living room decor. It has an ellipsoid shape and is nearly double the size of the Napping Pillow but much softer — it feels like how I imagine clouds would feel — and that combination makes it particularly useful.
I can hug the Soft Cushion against me for comfort, use it as a leg pillow if I’m sleeping on my side, put it behind my back for lumbar support, sit on it on the ground and play with my kids, or rest a book and my arms on it while reading. My kids borrow it for car rides, and I have to really work to convince them to return it to me. It stays remarkably cool and molds itself to your body to provide the right amount of support and cushioning; I never feel pushed into a rigid position.
I haven’t tried thesmaller cushionoption but I can see that one working similarly well, especially for desk chairs or under your knees while sleeping.
A highly specific shape with more uses than you might imagine
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I was skeptical of the Soft Loop Cushion at first, thinking it was too thin and floppy to provide any proper support for anything. But I’m happy to report that I was mistaken — of the three cushions I tried, this is the one I’ve been using most.
The cushion is shaped like a 6-foot-long soft noodle, and has four snap buttons to connect it into a loop. Unbuttoned, you can use it like a slim body pillow. I have also been wrapping it around my neck multiple times when I’m a passenger in a car, wearing it for coziness and warmth in air-conditioned spaces (it would be great in a movie theater) and placing it like ashrug around my shoulders and across my lumbaras I work at my computer. I suffer from regular migraines and have draped this cushion, unbuttoned, over my eyes and head like a cooling, lightly weighted eye mask while waiting for my medicine to kick in.
More cushions and pillows we like
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A buckwheat-hull pillow that may offer relief from neck pain.
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A long-time favorite of ours for travel.
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The sex pillow writer Erin Schwartz prefers to an office chair.
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