I’ve only had a brand new mattress twice in my life. My brother told me, prior to my most recent mattress purchase, that I spend more time on a mattress than I do in a car. That is absolutely correct, but in the time since I bought my last brand new mattress, I have owned over 5 cars. Now, some of my cars didn’t last because of accidents, but still, I have historically paid more attention to what I drive then where I sleep.
My first new mattress was purchased from a mattress store, I forget which, in 2010. My ex and I had just moved to a new town and wanted to buy a grown up bed and mattress, and took the time to go to a store and lie down on all the mattresses available and pick one out. We also bought a very nice bed frame on which to put the mattress. It was a pillow top of some sort, and actually very comfortable from what I remember.
That mattress was sold on the second hand market three and a half years later during a divorce, as was the bed frame. In that time, until now, I have slept on whatever mattress was available at the place I lived, or a couch for a year following the divorce, and nothing was very comfortable or accommodating. But I didn’t have much ready money, and real, grown up mattresses are not cheap. I mean, cheap ones can be had, but you really do get what you pay for in this regard. It is really worth it to buy the best you can afford, without spending ridiculous money, because I don’t think quality rises, necessarily, with the price beyond a certain threshold.
Fast forward to 2020. My wife I and had been sleeping on a full size bed with corresponding mattress, and needed a bit more, ahem, space. It’s not that we don’t like each other, but we needed room to roll over without bumping into one another and disturbing sleep. My sister had a queen size bed frame that she was getting rid of to accommodate her daughter moving into her first room outside the nursery, and it came with a standard spring mattress. I had slept on it before, during a short time when I lived with my sister, and it wasn’t too bad then. So my wife and I inherited a “new” bed.
We’ve slept on it ever since, and while the frame is perfectly acceptable, the mattress was, well, not. It started to compress rather rapidly, and try as we might to adjust where we slept or how we turned the mattress, there were valleys and depressions forming. It translated into back pain for me, and discomfort for her. Plus, that mattress transferred motion like a waterbed, and any time one of us would turn or toss, it would rock the other’s dreamworld. So we needed something new.
We knew we didn’t really have much more than $1000 to spend, and didn’t really want to go to a store to get a mattress. Plus, the smart money is now in the foam mattress-in-a-box that you can get from a variety of companies. After polling my family members, who all have one of these box bed cushions, I came up with three brands: Tuft & Needle, Ghostbed, and Leesa. I researched them all. What I found that was beyond our price point, there were all sorts of options and things, and each brand had their own version of cooling layers, support foam, and what have you. However, the entry level mattresses were all remarkably similar.
This is what I expected. Innovation is where the money is, and that is where you can charge your customers more. But for a basic, entry level foam mattress that will do the job and be what someone on a budget wants, it appears you can find what you are looking for at most manufacturers. In the end, Tuft & Needle had more or less exactly what we needed, and we went with an Amazon.com listing of the entry level mattress from two years ago to save a few bucks versus buying direct from the manufacturer. As I said, the company has iterated and improved since then, but also charge more for it. I figure that what was revolutionary two years ago is still perfectly adequate for now. After cringing at the fact that we were spending a lot of money for a mattress, but with my brother’s words echoing in my ears, we made the purchase.
Said mattress was supposed to arrive on Monday. It came this Sunday morning, just after eight thirty in the morning. My wife and I woke up, removed the old and busted (which was from 2008!) mattress, and promptly hauled many pounds of vacuum sealed mattress-in-a-box up the stairs. It unrolled quickly, and then inflated even quicker once we figured out what side was up and removed the final bits of plastic. Still, the instructions said to give it 2-3 hours before we slept on it, so I went to run some errands and my wife washed the sheets. Finally, just after lunch, both sheets and mattress were ready!
Apprehension has clouded this process for me. What we spent is a lot of money to our budget, and we want to make sure, like anybody does, that we made a smart, wise purchase. I was worried about what would happen if this mattress wasn’t comfortable, didn’t suit, or for whatever reason wouldn’t work out. How do you return a queen size mattress? Would we get our money back? So. Many. Variables. So I slept on it. I needed a nap anyway, and it was the perfect way to take a trial run on the new Tuft & Needle foam mattress. It took all of five minutes. Five minutes for my back pain and discomfort to melt away while I lay there, drifting off to sleep. I woke up 45 minutes later (I wasn’t going to sleep the day away, after all) feeling very comfortable and refreshed.
Tonight will be the real thing. My wife and I will try to get a full eight hours on the mattress and should be able to tell in the morning if we need to do something different. Or not. Tuft & Needle, even through Amazon, gives 100 days to try out the mattress or return it for your money back. The info card with the mattress says to give it a week to really break in the mattress and for your body to be used to it, so there may yet be more of an adjustment period. But we will see. I am hopeful. Given what I experienced this afternoon, it seems great. I really don’t want to try to return this one and go through that hassle. I really do want a comfortable, supportive night’s sleep every night. That is what the advertising says, and I really wish that to be what we get.
I’m sure I will update later on this year with what happened during this experiment on cloud nine. For now, things are looking good on the horizontal plane of existence.
a simple man 