I was thinking of getting a couch or something for my room, somewhere for guests to lounge around.
Fuck new couches. I now have a ball pit in my room.
I talked a little bit to Mike Machenry, who built a ball pit last year after reading my comic about it. The big problem with ball pits is that they’re expensive. Filling a room costs on the order of $4000, give or take. You can use this calculator (set up by relsqui of #xkcd) to find the cost for a given room. I’d use 64% for the packing efficiency — that’s about what I’ve found.
So given the expense, I didn’t fill my whole room — just an area the size of the bed, to a depth of a couple feet — and even that cost as much as a reasonable couch. The cost was as high as it was largely because Mike strongly recommended crush-proof balls, which allows for a lot more roughhousing but cost about twice as much as regular ones on eBay.
But it was totally worth it. After seeing how much fun it is to lounge around in it, we’ve decided to get together and build a larger one in the living room and throw parties there (though we want to solve the cleaning problem first in a scalable way). The day we put it up, we spent probably twelve hours, on and off, lounging around throwing plastic balls at each other. It’s totally worth it, and everyone’s excited about expanding it. It’s wonderful to be able to wake up and roll sideways, blanket and all, into a ball pit, and sink slowly down to the bottom. I’ve padded it with pillows and blankets to make it more fun to, uhh, wallow, or whatever the appropriate verb is for ball pits.
And before you jump to comment — over the last 24 hours we’ve completely exhausted all the balls-related innuendo, so you needn’t bother.
Here are some more pictures:
Abby, on the left, descends slowly into the balls. We never did find her again.
As Mike discovered, you can sort the balls pretty quickly by throwing only certain colors away from yourself.
Everyone I know seems to use Fujitsu Lifebooks. ❤ ultraportables.
To the above situation, we can only say:
xkcd 
Epic.
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301st comment.
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who needs two more wishes?…
Randall can i be your friend?
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It’s been my dream to have my own one-room ball pit for years now. Thank you for showing that I’m not childish for wanting this for myself. And thanks for the advice on non-crush balls and price.
I think if more people had ball-pits in their house they wouldn’t want to commit suicide due to stress.
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Why all ebay sellers deliver to US only?! Want smth like that in old continent as well 😦
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If they’d stayed sorted through sex, a party, repeated falling out of bed or washing–THAT would confound the second thermo principle; by the way, i report a red news about a controvercial site, SugarmommaMatch.com it enable rich women to have more chance of finding handsome and charming soul mates.
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Not sure if it matters but I linked to your blog and your store and website on my blog several times now – can’t help it, math and romance AND whimsy? Too good to resist. Anyway, I linked to it here at http://www.boombatti.blogspot.com which I’m sure is like a totally uncool to have a blog at, BUT I do have my own separate domain which is entirely unrelated and my own affair. Heh. My blog is for activism purposes and connecting with a community I care about. So…if you ever see fit to check it out I hope you’ll leave a comment. Thanks.
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OMG.. that is AWESOME!! Who wouldn’t love having a huge ball pit in their house? Thats fucking brilliant!!
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I’m trying to build a ballpit in my house now, but the plastic netting I’m using is too flimsy and keeps breaking. What are those sides made out of?
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I can’t say “Ball Washing Machine with Suction Unit” without laughing.
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Yes! I liked site, particularly a ball pit in room!!!
Great stuff !
Thank you for the resources.
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Such I did not yet see…
This room with balls I liked!
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HOORAY FOR BALL PITS!!! I was planning on turning one ENTIRE room into one in the future, but I’m not so sure anymore. Kick ass idea though.. I enjoyed the last two pictures. ❤
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Just chill on and enhance your libido for sure success.
http://www.libido-enhancers.com
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As soon as I move into a big enough room I WILL get one of these….
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ME, me me me.
And all the mac donalds in holland are pulling out these magnificent tools.
so, next time i go to the burger king!
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Really big fan of the strip, have had a wholly inappropriate crush on Mr. Munroe for years, and this is my first-ever comment. I hope someone actually sees it, since it’s clearly not very timely, but I read this post for the first time just today.
“I’ve padded it with pillows and blankets to make it more fun to, uhh, wallow, or whatever the appropriate verb is for ball pits.”
In my (admittedly two-thirds-assed) search, I was surprised – nay, shocked! – that no one had yet coined the obvious term: The verb, natch, should be “ballow.”
ballow /BALL-oh/ v. To wallow, lollygag, or otherwise immerse oneself in a ball pit
As for the strip, please don’t ever stop!
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typing this from my own ball pit made of 16000 balls….YAY. All bought from tescos. they thought it strange me buying 160 x 100 balls. o well.
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Totally awesome idea. I need a ball-pit… alas, my parents would never agree. Ah well. Only four years til I graduate from college… come to think of it, maybe I can do this at college!
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The idea is so cool. I want these balls in germany too…
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ballroom = playroom ? Very cool idea
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http://chiliahedron.com/ballroom/ are you sure this site gives good results. I calculated that I will need about 3000 balls but this site say i will only need 400? My pit will be 4 1/2 ft wide by 4 1/2 ft long and 2 ft deep.
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Oh kids 🙂
?????? ???
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