Buying a Mattress for Your Bed

Buying a mattress for your bed is like a love affair: a major investment in money, time, and anxiety. Apparently, however, most people dislike buying mattresses more than they dislike buying cars, and trust mattress sales people even less than those who sell cars. That's saying a lot!

Three years ago, while trying to maintain our health, and still be good, intelligent stewards of our resources, my husband and I went shopping for a new mattress. We gave up our beloved water mattress and spent nearly a thousand dollars on a name brand queen-size "real" mattress and foundation. I won't say we made a completely unwise choice, but there are a few things I wish I had done differently - things I will definitely do differently the next time around - which may be soon.

How High, My Love?

Our mattress is 14" thick; the extra memory foam topper we added later makes it 15". That height added to the foundation and frame puts the top of the bed 31" above the floor, which is higher than my dining room table. Kinda makes the bed hard to get onto. We probably need those little steps, but I know we'd both be tripping on them and stubbing our toes in the dark, so we have resisted that temptation. If I want to sit on the end of my bed for any reason, however, I have to hike myself up onto it (which, at my age, isn't pretty), and my feet are nowhere near the floor at that time. So, the bed is not useful for putting on shoes or panty-hose, etc. But it's great for packing suitcases and folding laundry, since there's no bending over involved.

How Deep, How Wide?