Tip of the Day: How to Buy a Mattress

We decided to buy a new bed. We have been sleeping on a full sized mattress that Albert bought off of Craig's List for my birthday in 2007. While pregnant I vowed that I would have a new bed by the time we decided to have another. It was uncomfortable and there was no room for all three of us plus my maternity body pillow. Even though I'm not expecting, we decided to go ahead and get a new mattress since we both wake up to middle back pain every morning. Family members suggested we skip the queen sized bed and go right to the king since kids always want to hang out on their parents' bed.

Initially we looked online planning on buying the cheapest one we could find and then we went to Sleepy's to check them out.  We really liked their My Side Series 6 Mattresses and after doing their little test we found that instead of a firm mattress like we thought we wanted, we really needed a softer mattress that conformed to our bodies.

We talked the guy down some and he threw in a pair of sheets.  It's the most expensive mattress in the store and we weren't sure we were making a good decision.  We decided to cancel our order and keep searching.  When I called the headquarters to cancel they offered me the employee discount.  It was 48% below the initial price.  We decided to take it figuring we could always cancel it again later if we found something else. The trick with Sleepy's is that you can cancel anytime before it's delivered so make sure you give yourself enough time to do some shopping before the delivery date.

We went to almost every mattress store in the area to try out different mattresses and Albert looked on-line at all the mattress purchasing tips.  They said not to buy any mattress for more than 50% of the initial price and they also said that there isn't a big difference between $2000 mattresses and $1000 mattresses.  I could tell a difference between the lower priced mattresses so I'm not sure if that's true or not.  Especially when purchasing a king sized mattress you need to make sure there is enough support in the middle of the bed because they are so big they tend to sag.

We never found a mattress we liked better so we had it delivered on September 3.  We opted not to get the box springs as it saved us $1000.  Instead we bought a platform bed frame from Wal-Mart.  We also put cardboard between the mattress and the frame to provide extra support.

We've had the the mattress for a month now and we love having the extra space.  It's so much more comfortable and I rarely wake up in the middle of the night like I used to.  So far so good.  Our bedroom is finally starting to come together.