Serta Velvet Lovenest

My wedding was in August, but we hadn't gotten around to bed shopping until this weekend. Up till now, we've been using a "full" size mattress that J got second-hand. The way she sleeps, it's too small for the both of us. And the way I get up about a dozen times during the night, we needed something that would minimize the disturbance. Anyway, my parents offered to buy us a new mattress for our wedding gift. We were extremely grateful.

Neither of us had shopped for a mattress before, and we weren't exactly sure how to go about it. How does one truly gauge the quality of a mattress without taking it for a "test drive," so to speak? After all, there are only a couple of things I use my bed for, and I don't feel comfortable doing either one in the middle of a furniture store. On that note, Rob of Cockeyed.com ponders,

Strange that cars, clothes, liquor, medicine, cosmetics and tiny, wireless video cameras are sold with sex, but mattresses are marketed with sleep.

For those in the same predicament, I recommend a trip to Slumberland. It turns out they have a very generous return policy in case the bed you purchase isn't quite perfect. We were about to purchase a new mattress set there, but instead went to a Slumberland outlet store and purchased one of the very mattresses that had been used and returned. Sure, we got it for half the original price, but I'll always wonder...

But it was obvious we could have done worse. The mattress next to it featured a big red tag marked "SOILED." Ew. Could there be a better word to discourage potential buyers? I can't think of one.

Categories: life