Mattress Shopping - A Decision is Made!

After going through Mattress Hell, it took us a while to venture back into anything remotely resembling a mattress store. Well, all of three days.

We went to that mecca of all things homely, er, I mean, home-y: Nebraska Furniture Mart (imagine a booming echo while saying those 3 words)

We had done some research on the Tempur-Pedic beds, and wanted to check one of those out. FYI - it's really, really hard to determine the differences between mattresses on the web. They are just one of those things you have to go SEE. And I wasn't sure if I would like the memory foam stuff - that seemed kind of hot and weird to me.

Anyway, I had a few of the "lower" priced Tempur-Pedic (TP) beds marked to check out. Please notice the quotes around "lower"...these beds range from $1500 - $7000. Yowsa!

We first practice-slept on some 'regular' beds, in order to get a baseline. Control freak much? Yeah, I know. Shut up.

Then we got onto a lower-end TP bed. Hmmm....not so bad. They actually feel like a waterbed filled with gel.

The salesdude walked over to check on us. We shooed him away. Not ready yet.

Then we tried the middle-range bed (the "Rhapsody" if you're keeping score at home). Wow. Yes, I think we actually said, "Wow". It felt good. Firm, but not rigid. Soft but not smooshy.

Again, I'm channelling that Goldilocks vibe here...

Salesdude was back. Said lots of great things about the bed. We asked some questions. He gave some answers.

We actually liked the TP pillows too. Uh-oh...my mind started tallying up the prices. The pillows are a hefty $100+ each! But my back told my mind to shut the f&*#% up.

It could be delivered the next day. The next day was Friday. I was off and would be at home. There was no excuse not to, so we bought the bed.

Ka-ching! Let's just say we could have bought about 3 'regular' beds with the money we spent.
Yeah, Dave Ramsey would be horrified. Whatever.

A couple notes about these types of beds:
1. When you get them home, the memory foam stuff gives off a chemical odor for about 3 days. Opening the windows and turning on a fan helps. It's not super bad, but it was a very weird smell. The salesdude warned us, luckily, or we might have freaked.

2. You have to "break-in" the mattress. Minds out of the gutter, please! Ahem. We had to get on the bed and walk around on it. Both of us. To music. Okay, that last part we improvised. And we had Alex walk on our pillows to break them in. That was Big Fun and he slept like a babe after all that exercise.

2a. If you get the pillows, you need to break them in to. We totally spaced this and had sore necks the first morning, because the pillows were like rocks. After break-in, they are much better.

3. You have to "break-in" your body to the mattress. I am used to tossing and turning all night long. With this mattress, you don't really need to do that. It's actually HARDER to toss and turn, since it's like the gel water bed. This took us about a week to get used to - and I'll be honest, we had some hard nights.

4. If you sleep "hot", you won't need a comforter anymore. I never thought I "slept hot", but after waking up feeling like I had a heating pad under me, I realized that I was cooking myself. The memory foam is denser than typical fabric, and you lay in place longer. Thus...burnt ends.

5. You will absolutely NOT KNOW if your sleeping partner gets up out of bed. This bed doesn't even flince when someone moves on it. I believe this is a good thing.

6. I AM a bit horrified at how much we spent, but you sleep 6-8 hours a day. About a third or fourth of your day is spent in bed, so why not be comfortable?

Sweet Dreams! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...