Brian and I have been mattress shopping for awhile. As a person who loathes shopping, I can tell you I was not looking forward to this tedious task. I found, however, that I rather enjoyed it. After all, laying down to shop? I can handle that! Anyway, we’ve done a lot of research online, been to a few stores before we were too serious about the whole thing. We’ve thrown the idea around for several months, but just hadn’t had the extra money. Hello tax season!

Now that we’ve dealt with Uncle Sam for the year, we decided it was time. Not just because we had the extra money, but because we needed it. We knew our mattress was old. It was old when it was given to us my my mil 8 yrs ago. We couldn’t find a tag to tell us exactly how old it was, but we are guessing it’s probably upwards of 30 years old. Yes, 30 years. That’s 3 times it’s normal lifespan. In other words, it was DOA. But, when you’re young and first starting out, you take what you can get. It didn’t seem so bad back then. And since it was free, that made it even better.

Fast forward 8 years. Neither of us were sleeping well. In fact, I can’t say that either of us were really even sleeping. It was probably more restless napping than anything. And what little sleep we were getting was as far from quality as you can possibly get. I was waking up every morning in pain. DH (and likely myself) was snoring every night. We tossed and turned trying to get comfortable. It was just awful. I was seriously on the verge of sleeping on the couch…or the air mattress. Either would have been more comfortable that our bed.

So, out of our research, the first thing we looked at (in-store) was a sleep number. And we almost pulled the trigger on one. It was very, very nice. But we decided that if we were going to spend that much money on a sleep number, it should probably be on one better than their entry-level mattress and we couldn’t afford anything other than that. So, as much as we liked it, we decided that’s probably in our future, but not in our present. We then spent the rest of the week researching and shopping, etc. Friday, when we were both off work, we did some heavy-duty shopping. One of the local stores was having a sale and we went to check it out. They put us through a “comfort test” where they had use lie on mattress to determine which firmness we liked best. Brian and I disagree slightly. He likes a really firm mattress and I like a firm, yet soft, mattress. I imagine this is due to the fact that I have more curves and therefore find a slightly softer mattress fits those curves better.

We tried several mattresses, layed on probably a dozen or so. And many of them we layed on several times. We finally got it narrowed down to 2 mattresses, both Sealy’s. One of them was a traditional inner spring mattress with a layer (or two) of memory foam around the hip area of the bed. It was comfortable for both of us, it seemed. The other was a memory foam mattress. We’d heard a great deal about them, but had never layed on one before. It was so nice! I had woken up that morning in pain, as usual. This time in my shoulder. However, when I layed on the memory foam mattress, I felt no pain at all. The others had muffled the pain, but it was still there, even if only very dull. Since I’m a side sleeper, the fact that I felt no pain at all on the memory foam bed was a huge light bulb for me. It also piqued Brian’s interest knowing that I felt no pain. My choice between the two mattresses was the memory foam. I loved it. The salesman said women tend to like them more than men because they have more curves and the memory foam fits those curves better.

We left the store and headed home to get the boys off the bus. We did some more research and headed out to one other store. We tried their memory foam and although we liked it, I found it not quite as firm as the Sealy. Not that that really mattered. It was all about price. We left there leaning toward their mattress because it was going to be cheaper. We headed back to the previous store, trying to decide where to go and what to do. It didn’t take us long to decide. They were going to be cheaper, even if only by $20. Seems silly, I know, but when you factor in tax, we were saving more than just $20. It’s more like $120 and that’s a big difference to us. We even bought a couple of memory foam pillows to go with it.

It was delivered on Saturday and our old mattress was carted off to wherever old mattresses go to die. Ours was already dead, but I can take comfort in knowing it won’t be alone in it’s mattress graveyard, lol. And after 3 nights of sleeping on it, I can say that I am so very happy with it. Brian is not snoring anymore. Neither of us are tossing and turning. I’m not waking up in pain. And we can both tell that the quality of sleep we are getting is leaps and bounds above anything we’ve had in years. I woke up today feeling the best I have in years, literally. I woke up today expecting to feel tired, and half-convinced myself I was. But honestly, I’m not. I can’t even pretend that I am. I can’t remember the last time I slept the way I am sleeping on this mattress, and we’ve only had it 3 nights!

Here are pics of our old mattress and our new one. Trust me…the pics of our old one don’t do it justice!

I tried to capture the “divots” in the bed; the impressions that were permanently put in place over the years. The pooch in the middle (if you can see it) is where, well, where we obviously didn’t sleep, lol.

We don’t know exactly how old our mattress is, but the look of the tag gave us an idea…

The new one coming off the truck. I was at work, so this is all dh got.

And the new mattress. Brian had it all made up when I got home, so again, this is what you get It has a protective covering over it, and I didn’t take it off, but this is what it looks like sand sheets.

And here it is all made up. Didn’t dh do a great job making the bed?

I’d say for our first ginormous furniture purchase, it went very well and we are happy with it.

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When I was in high scholl and college, I worked in retail. Specifically, I sold jewelry and diamonds. Having worked many black Friday’s in retail, I swore I’d never go shopping on that day. It was GREAT for commission, though, let me tell you! I digress….

Wer have been searching for months for a Nintendo Wii. No one has had any. We saw one advertised at K Mart yesterday, so dh got in line yesterday morning. He was #13 in line and they only had 7 We saw one advertised at Sams, so I decided to get in line at 2 am this morning in anticipation of their 5 am opening. I was #4 in line for the Wii. I’m so very glad I chose Sam’s over some other place, as they had 48.

All-in-all it was a good experience. I was wearing 2 layers on the bottom, three layers on top, dh’s big heavy winter coat, 2 hats, gloves, a thick pair of socks and my boots. The only part of me that was cold were my feet. I sat on a cushion reading a book and chatting with the people around me. There was a woman who was dropped off who decided to ignore the chairs that had been placed in line by the people there at 6:30 the nigh before. Her excuse was that chairs couldn’t hold places in line. I, however, recognized that they were in line and placed my cushion after the chairs. The people hadn’t left the parking lot…they were in their cars keeping warm. Who could blame them? She refused to get in her proper place in line, which was behind me (at #5) until a policeman came along and made her. There were much tears on her part, but I’m glad she finally did the right thing, even if she didn’t think it was the right thing. Common courtesy, people.

It was an experience that I won’t likely soon repeat, but it’s probably better that I had my experience outside of Sams Club rather than Best Buy

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