STORING BEDDING IN AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE

Few features of the Airstream Interstate have garnered as many varied complaints as the fold-down beds (e.g., see this Air Forums thread titled "My bed solution").  Those who do find relief by using add-on products such as mattresses and toppers often have difficulty storing their bedding materials in the Interstate's small space.

In this post, I detail a DIY solution for both wheeled and non-wheeled storage of our chosen winter bedding, which is the sleeping bags that we already owned from years of backcountry camping.  We are doing some boondocking this winter, running the Interstate's furnace only sporadically to conserve battery life (the heater is gas-powered but its blower fan draws electricity), and so our chosen bags are fairly bulky.  I present the customized solution first, and follow with sewing instructions.

Bear in mind that if your Interstate is of a different lay-out from ours, you can still customize a bedding storage solution for your available space.  This post will hopefully give you some ideas on what kind of container you might need to craft for your needs and available space.

ADVISORY:  Be aware that there are certain couch-related recalls pertaining to fire potential (e.g., here) for the Airstream Interstate.  If you are going to modify the use of your Interstate in any way, be aware of the potential for unintended consequences associated with the fact that electrical, heating, and plumbing systems run through the various void spaces.  See also our BIG FAT DISCLAIMER.

There is one of two -20F sleeping bags in its home-made "sausage", which is designed to contain it in a specific shape suitable for storage, and also to protect it from dirt and snags while being inserted and removed from an under-couch space that was not necessarily designed for bedding storage.  

We have one of these slots with fold-down doors immediately beneath each jack-knife couch.  One holds the large table that goes in the center holes you see in the floor here, and the other holds the hand crank for the awning (ours is not motorized).  Both represent, in my opinion, an inefficient use of space, which is why I decided to try to use them for sleeping bag storage, rather than sacrificing dedicated storage bins for this purpose.   

This is what I mean.  The starboard couch slot holds only the awning hand crank (white linear object visible here).  What a waste of space in a vehicle where waste is not affordable.  

Here are the same two sleeping bags in their "sausages" and hanging in our master bedroom closet (they actually hang from loops on the sleeping bags themselves so that the bags will not pile up at the bottoms of the sausages).  The idea here is that they can be transported efficiently from closet to Interstate with no fuss, no changing of container.  

Here is how I constructed these storage "sausages".

This stuff is two bucks per yard in a common fabric store - can't beat that price (and it is available in Interstate gray to boot).  This is a very slippery polyester lining.  We needed the bags to slip efficiently in and out of the sausages, but we also needed the sausages themselves to slip in and out of the under-couch slots.  

These were fairly expensive sleeping bags, and the deal with sleeping bags is that you can't keep them under compression for long periods - it will destroy their loft.   Because of this reason and also to minimize time, we did not want to have to re-insert each bag into its manufacturer-issued compression sack after every night's sleep in the Interstate.  That is just way too much hassle.

I measured the circumference that the sausage needed to be to contain these bags in a rough cylinder shape without overly compressing them.  It ended up being around 33 inches.  

I also double-checked the length.  My husband's bag is six inches longer than mine.  

My solution here was to sew a simple tube for each with a sleeve for a drawstring at each end (not just at one end like conventional storage bags have).

In the pic above, I actually screwed up the order of seam sewing - the side seams should have been sewn first, but that doesn't matter too much.

Here is what makes this method so efficient, especially while working in the small space of the Interstate.  You don't have to "stuff" the sleeping bag into a conventional closed-end bag.  You just reach your hand in one end of the tube...

...and pull the sleeping bag all the way through to the other end before tying off both ends.  It takes about two seconds, literally.    

One of two.  These take about an hour apiece to make with very basic sewing skills.  The main difficulty is that the lining fabric is so slippery that it's difficult to control.  

Once in the tube, the bags are easier to manage.

My husband's storage sausage has a blue drawstring cord so that we can tell them apart.  

Easier to manage and to carry.  Sorry for the poor selfie - the camera would not focus on the mirror's reflection.  

The whisper-thin polyester "sausages" weigh almost nothing and have little bulk, taking up no extra space in the Interstate.  Cost per sausage is about five dollars to construct.  

Good luck as you devise your own bedding storage solution.