For every Gen Y who hasn’t left the nest, there’s one who has, who will return home for Christmas.
Some people’s parents might have turned your old room into a study or a guest room, but some parents hang onto the bed, and even the linen, from your childhood.
A few years ago, this was the situation facing writer and musician Rhodri Marsden when he arrived home for the holidays. He snapped a picture of his time-warp sleeping arrangements and posted it on Twitter and Instagram.
Pretty soon, he started getting similar pics from across the United Kingdom.
Five-year-old me would have LOVED a Lady and the Tramp doona cover. That is the stuff tiny-person dreams are made of.
Now, not so much. I would take that kitten though.
Marsden, who has over 37,000 Twitter followers, preserved all the tweets in a Storify, and decided to go again in 2013.
After all, if your parents haven’t thrown out your 20-plus-year-old sheets by the time you’re old enough to be returning annually for Christmas, then there’s a good chance other adults across the world are also going to be coming face-to-face with their past every year.
Yep. That is bleak.
So bleak.
The ’90s. It burns.
Marsden kept it up last year, with some of the strongest entries yet.
Eeyore is all of us.
This one should be disqualified on the grounds that dinosaurs are awesome at every age.
Hello Kitty nightmares.
Marsden says he likes documenting the terrible beds of our youth because the whole experience is part of what Christmas is about.
“For some reason they seem to collectively convey the spirit of Christmas without having any Christmassy stuff in them whatsoever,” Marsden told Buzzfeed.
So if you find yourself tossing and turning amid tangled Rainbow Brite sheets this year, know that you are not alone.
Take a picture and upload it to Twitter, where all the other adults whose parents can’t bear to throw away their children’s abandoned things will be able to see it.
And know that you are not alone struggling to sleep in a Christmas time warp.