Friday, March 09, 2012

Mattress Discounters Is Going To Hate Me

After 15 years, I decided that it was time to get a new mattress.  Queen size instead of king, so I could rearrange the bedroom. And I could manage to make the bed without walking my short self to one side of the bed and then the other no less than 3 times.  Also, I was eyeing an honest-to-goodness real bedframe at IKEA, with a head board and a footboard, so the room would actually look furnished.

A woman can dream, can't she?

So what I have now is a brand new queen-sized mattress lying on the floor of my bedroom, flanked by 2 nightstands I bought for 25 dollars at a thrift store 18 years ago.  It wasn't easy to get to this point, people.  I had to go to the mattress store and try out the different beds, with 3 children in tow.  I had to get over sticker shock. (1000 dollars?  Really?

And finally, today, the guys were coming to pick up the old mattress and box springs and deliver the new.  Which meant that I had to shovel out all the crap that has been accumulating in my bedroom since 2007.  I can't even blame Larry, since he doesn't happen to be the person in this marriage who has half-finished projects and abandoned crafting supplies piled up in every available corner. 

Look, it was an awful day.  By the end, I managed to clear out the main bedroom area by piling everything else into the (no longer) walk-in closet AND completely blocking the entrance thereof.  Also?  There are now boxes of photos in the master bathroom.

On the plus side, I finally got around to moving Larry's dresser into the little alcove across from the master bath.  That dresser creeps me out because it makes weird sounds on cold nights.  And it's ugly. 

So!  Larry gets home (late) tonight.  I'm lying in our freshly made-up bed (on the floor), testing it out.  He lies down, too.  "What do you think?" I ask.

"It's too soft."

I'll give him credit - he looked nervous when he said it.

But the worst part?  He's right.

18 comments:

  1. The stuff you had to move, craft supplies piled up semi-forgotten... these things are not scary, they are NORMAL. Even a mattress on the floor is almost normal. But I am frightened by the "too soft" announcement. That is scary and a good reason to not make any more big purchases. Because what is better than being paralyzed by fear? (I wouldn't know the answer to that.)

    PS: I'm 5'10" and it still takes me several trips around the bed to make it!

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  2. You are doing better than I am. The Grand Canyon resides in the middle of my old crazy mattress. I'm saving the thousand bucks and just pretending I'm on that Citibank commercial, rock repelling every night.

    ps-check out the beds on my latest post to make you feel better.

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  3. Wow, too soft? I thought all mattresses were too hard at the beginning. Maybe it will harden up eventually (yeah, right).

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  4. We recently did that. Except DH went with me and felt the need to splurge an EXTRA $1000 on some weird box springs that folds up and vibrates and has a remote control.

    We returned that. But we did keep the mattress. Even though it was a little too soft.

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  5. Oh. Heartbreak. Especially considering the one thing you probably need most after all that effort is a comfortable night's sleep!

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  6. having just gone through the whole mattress thing, i totally understand.

    THEN, because our new furniture arrived BEFORE our mattress, we slept on the floor on our old mattress for 10 days.

    when we finally got our king mattress, and watched two burly guys heft that thing up 18 steep stairs, maneuver it around two sharp corners, and heave it on our bedframe ... we knew that, NO MATTER WHAT, that mattress was staying.

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  7. We should get a new mattress too, but yeah, it's the cleaning, and the fact that I don't actually like strange people tromping through my house, and then if it's rainy that day there will be mud EVERYWHERE, and...yeah. I was pretty sure the mattress was hurting my back but then I got diagnosed with Lyme so I figure that was really it and we can get another few years out of this one. Although there is a chain up here that has a commercial telling us 7 lbs of crap (dust, sweat, etc) accumulates in a mattress after ten years. I hate that guy.

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  8. Our queen-size new mattress, purchased 8 years ago, is still on the floor, flanked by two thrift store end tables. Amen.

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  9. We bought a new mattress, oh, 5 years or so ago. Then, when I was sick I spent some time sleeping on an older but softer mattress in our spare room. That spare-room mattress is now in our room, because I'm getting ancient, and apparently I feel better on a softer mattress now. Unfortunately, this one has a canyon in the middle too --luckily we like to sleep close to each other :-)

    Oh, and like Karen above, I'm also 5'10" and I still have to walk around the bed several times to make it. Plus, at this height I couldn't even get up out of a mattress on the floor --I'd need a crane.

    Can you return a mattress?

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  10. And that is why we still have the same mattress after 22 years. Gary gave away the mattress we bought for the guest room because he felt it was unacceptable.

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  11. Years ago in NY this guy sold me a box spring made out of wood. He said I'd never have to replace it because - wood. Even though I thought it was some madeup mattress store mumbo jumbo I bought it and he was right. And of course they don't make those anymore because you never have to buy a new box springs. Ah, the good ole days.

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  12. You could always put a piece of plywood underneath the mattress. I did that one day while my DH was at work because our soft mattress was killing my back. The next morning I asked him how he slept and he said "I slept terribly, I felt like I was sleeping on a board."Then he never mentioned it again.That was two years ago. We're moving soon and I wonder what he's going to say when he discovers the board under the mattress.

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  13. OH no!
    We need a new mattress--and I am so scared we'll buy one too soft or too hard--and they are NOT cheap.

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  14. I bought that bed frame from IKEA, and I love it! And the matching nightstands and dresser. And after my husband got it all assembled, we put our 10 year old mattress on it.

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  15. same thing just happened to us. since we are now 3 in the bed, i finally bought a king sized mattress. i went for the tempurpedic b/c there were just too many darn choices. problem was, i am a stomach sleeper and that thing hurt my back... so i did the whole thing all over again, paid $300 re-stocking fee, and ended up w/ a firm mattress i like. sheesh.

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  16. Thank you. I don't know why it helps to hear that other people have made the same (expensive) mistake, but it does.

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  17. If your mattress is 15 years old, then it’s certainly a good idea to replace it and buy a new one. You don’t want to have aching body in the morning because of it, right? And worse, you might get some skin diseases because of the dust mites and other bacteria that accumulated on your mattress. Anyway, how’s the mattress now? Does it still to soft for Larry?

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    Replies
    1. If you read this post here, you'll find out how we solved the problem.

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