For the last 5 years, my wife and I have been searching for the perfect mattress. We have purchased a grand total of 6 in that time span. That's no typo. Every year, we head to the most depressing places of business on the planet (yes, they are worse than fabric stores), and throw thousands of dollars away on something that may not work.
My wife prefers firm, while I, being a stomach sleeper, prefer something a little softer unless I want all the blood to get cut off from my arms, waking up at 4am with "dead arm".
When we moved into our current house, we were using a Sleep Number bed which was fine, but seemingly overnight started to fall apart. We felt like we were camping in a tent on cheap Wal-Mart air mattresses.
Ever since then, we have embarked on fruitless searches for The One. There had to be a king mattress that would work for both of us, right? At first, we were wiling to spend whatever it takes. So we dropped around $2000 at Sleep Experts. Foam-encased edge support, Pima cotton cover, 8-way hand tied box springs, solid gold encased coils. It was the Cadillac of mattresses. And after only 3 months, it started sagging on either side. Make that the Chevy Cobalt of mattresses. Off to the next store.
This madness continued for the next few years. Too hot, too firm, too soft. Much sleep was lost, relationships strained. Murder-suicide contemplated.
But this year would be different.
We hired a babysitter, and went into Mattress Giant ready to make The Right Mattress Purchase. And after about 2 minutes using the telepathic capabilities married couples have after 12 years, and glancing at the seedy mattress salesman with a clip on tie, mismatched shoes, medical-grade dandruff and a metal hook for a hand, both sensed we wanted to get the hell out of there.
Rockwall just opened a brand spanking new Costco about half a mile from our house, so we bought a membership and walked past the endless aisles of adult diapers, 8,000 count Snickers boxes, and stacks of $9 elastic waistband mom-jeans to the mattress section. I pulled down the 3 king selections they had, and we laid down on all of them in the middle of the store. One old codger eating a moon pie walked by and winked at me with his glass eye. Prices were roughly $700-$900. We picked the one with the pillow top, because it seemed right in the store, despite a brightly-lit, 23,000 ft. warehouse not being anything remotely like our house.
I strapped the monstrous thing to the top of her SUV, and like those people you see on the highway shaking your head at, haul it to our house before the skies opened up with rain. We got it home and gave it a try. No,
sleeping you pervs.
After lying there for 4 hours, it's 4am and I'm sweating like a pig. I took off my shirt and lay on top of the comforter, continuing to sweat. I got up and went into the other room to catch the final 3 hours I had before work. My sweet wife at least gave it a try. A few nights later we returned it.
The return desk didn't even look at it, which was scary considering I could have murdered somebody on it, or worse, been incontinent. We bought it with our debit card, so they had to give us cash in return. I rolled up the wad, put a rubber band around it, and gave it to my wife who promptly placed it in her bra.
I had an idea. I was done with this whole thing. I decided we should find the cheapest, crappiest twin mattresses we could find, and put them together. It had to work. My wife shrugged. We walked over to the mattress section again and found them. $149 a piece. Who cares if they weren't the right length? I didn't want to search any more. I was defeated. I picked them up since they weighed about 3 pounds apiece, and threw them on the cart. The creepy old lady who checked us out the other night was eyeing me agin, certain I was up to no good.
We brought them home, put a mattress pad on them, and you couldn't even tell they weren't a single king mattress. Midnight rolled around, and it was time for the moment of truth. I turned out the light after watching some fat guy show on TLC. I was scared to death. Would it work? I laid down and fell asleep.
7 hours later, I woke up. Did I just sleep through the night? No arm numbness, no heat, no back pain, no fevered dreams about hell and midgets. Nothing. Just good sleep.
Wow.
There is no other product for sale that has a greater disconnect between price and quality than a mattress. Nothing. It's worse than car shopping, because at least you know what you are getting with a car, and you get to test drive it. And driving a crappy car won't deprive you of sleep. With a mattress, you have no idea what you are getting until you bring it home and sleep on it. Laying on it in the store doesn't mean a thing, unless you enjoy making human hair snow angels.
I have no moral with this story really, except that you are screwed trying to buy a mattress. Now off I go to sleep on my $150 twin.
