Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s message: “No Kid Sleeps on the Floor in Our Town” (Image Credit: SHP)
A single homemade bunk bed built in an Idaho garage in 2012 has grown into a large volunteer movement focused on one simple goal: making sure children have a proper place to sleep. The organisation that grew from founder Luke Mickelson’s first bed-building effort, what began as a small Christmas project has expanded to more than 400 chapters across the United States and Canada, according to Sleep in Heavenly Peace (SHP). The organisation now has more than 400 chapters across the United States and Canada, according to its website. The organisation’s 2025 campaign alone recorded 10,075 beds built, 12,955 volunteers and 48,476 volunteer hours. Fourteen years after the first garage build, the project continues to revolve around the same basic need that inspired it in 2012: ensuring that children have a bed of their own.
Over the years, volunteers have built and delivered hundreds of thousands of beds to children in need, turning a personal act of service into a wider effort to address what the organisation calls child bedlessness. The organisation’s work involves more than assembling wooden frames. Volunteers help build beds, prepare mattresses and bedding, and participate in deliveries to families. Local chapters also work with community groups, businesses and donors to obtain the materials and funding required for the programme. The result is a process in which people can contribute at different stages, from helping construct a bed to providing bedding or assisting with delivery. SHP’s growth demonstrates how the chapter model has allowed the project to spread well beyond its original community. The contrast between SHP’s beginnings and its current scale is considerable. What started with Mickelson building beds in his garage has developed into a network of hundreds of chapters and thousands of volunteers. The growth has also changed the nature of the original idea. It is no longer simply one person building a bed for one child; it is a community-based system that allows people across different cities and states to take part in the same mission.
The story started in December 2012, when Mickelson decided to spend part of Christmas building bunk beds for children who did not have beds of their own. In 2025, the seventh annual Bunks Across America involved 209 chapters and nearly 13,000 volunteers, who helped build more than 10,000 beds. SHP said that by then, more than 300,000 children had received beds since the organisation was founded in 2012.
Because their families cannot afford a bed, but the idea behind them was straightforward: children should not have to sleep on floors. The first project took place in his garage in Twin Falls, Idaho. Mickelson and people close to him built beds and prepared to deliver them to local children. One of the people who joined that first effort was Jordan Allen, Mickelson’s childhood friend. Allen later recalled that the group initially saw the activity largely as a woodworking project. That changed when they delivered one of the beds to a young child who had been sleeping on the floor. The experience showed them that a basic piece of furniture could have a much larger meaning for a child and family facing difficult circumstances. The first beds were simple, handmade bunk beds. The event has grown considerably over the years. The annual campaign gives volunteers a common period in which to work towards the same objective, while individual chapters continue their work throughout the year.