To Air is Divine!
Jun 05 '02
The Bottom Line All those overpriced, complicated mattresses are a joke... IMHO! I'll share my little secret with the world, and have a great night's sleep besides! Sweet Dreams, everyone!
8-)
After decades of experimentation with conventional mattress and box spring sets, water beds, air mattresses and overpriced sophisticated adjustable air beds, my husband and I have achieved the most comfortable and affordable sleeping support we've ever experienced.
Until now, our favorite system for pure comfort was a baffled, heated waterbed mattress. When the heater finally malfunctioned after years of good use, we had difficulty finding a replacement, and the prospect of draining the bed, installing the new heater, and refilling the mattress seemed like a lot of trouble. Waterbeds had seemed to fall out of their previous, faddish, favor, and fewer stores carried them anymore.
WHAT TO DO NOW?
My Hubby and I have always loved the way waterbed mattresses supported us by conforming to our shapes, instead of the other way around. Whenever we sleep in a hotel, or at a friend's house on a conventional mattress, we notice the difference and are aware of the little aches and pains that result from our bodies being forced to conform to the shape and firmness of the mattress.
Then we saw numerous ads for expensive air mattress systems with so-called adjustable firmness for each partner, etc. We called the most prominant of those companies for a quote! GASP! Over two grand for their system by the time you pay for tax, shipping, etc.!!! Water bed mattresses had always cost under $200. We did not feel like getting SOAKED when we bought an air mattress...
Then we noticed the ordinary inflatable air mattresses in the major discount chains for sale at about forty bucks. OK... Why not try that?
THE AMAZING AIR OF SOPHISTICATION
Since I'm not supposed to name names and brands here, I'll just say that the air mattress we bought is available at a very reasonable price at a very well known department store chain for less than $50. We inflated it and used it in our waterbed frame, which has sides that supported the air mattress very well. We did not buy the air mattress with the automatic inflation attachment, because that is attached to the side of the mattress, and would have interfered with placing the mattress inside the waterbed frame. We purchased the ordinary air mattress with the filling opening on the side, and the small air filling blower designed to go with it. The blower plugs into the wall outlet to be charged up, and then works just fine.
The most popular air mattresses are made with inner shapes resembling coils, and we found them extremely comfortable and surprisingly similar to sleeping on a baffled waterbed mattress. There was an unexpected bonus: we did not feel cold when there was no heater... very nice, since you cannot use a heater with an air mattress. So we saved money and effort.
POSITIVE COMPARISONS
The air mattress is easier to make up than either a waterbed mattress, or conventional mattress, because it is so lightweight and easy to lift when putting on the mattress cover and fitted sheet. It needs to be inflated well enough to hold it's shape before you put on the mattress cover, though, because most mattress covers are very tight and have to be stretched. This seemed difficult at first, but we developed a technique for doing this very easily, and it does not have to be done every time you change the sheets.
Now we had a very comfortable, very inexpensive bed. Our one annoyance was that after a few months, one of our kitties apparently made a tiny hole in the mattress with one of his claws. We repaired it with the patch kit that came with the mattress.
Then we decided to figure out some way of protecting the mattress from the kneading claws of our comfortable, happy kitties who love to lie on our bed with us. We purchased a thick, fluffy, goose feather mattress pad for under $100, and placed it on top of the mattress cover and under our fitted bottom sheet. This was wonderfully comfortable... and so thick that it protected the air mattress from the kitties.... except that occasionally we felt the tiny pin prick of a feather quill through the material. So we did ONE MORE THING... we bought a looser fitting, lightly padded, quilted mattress cover to put on top of the fluffy goose feather pillow top mattress cover. This cost less than $50. There are now three layers under our fitted sheet and over our inexpensive air mattress: A tight fitting mattress cover (which, we felt, would protect the air mattress from any little protruding feather quills, too); a fluffy goose feather pillow top mattress cover; followed by a looser fitting quilted mattress cover.
ALL of this stuff cost us a total of under $300, and in our humble opinion, it is absolutely the most comfortable bed we have EVER slept upon... bar NONE. It feels absolutely marvelous!
We recently listened to my brother and sister-in-law lament the disappointments they've had with one of those expensive, adjustable sleep systems. It malfunctioned... it developed a lump... they had to wait a long time for a replacement... blah blah blah. And it cost eighteen hundred dollars!!! Since my brother is one of these people who seems to think that everything worthwhile has to be expensive, we will just invite them to lay on our bed and see what they think... then, if they like what they feel, tell them what it cost us.
SOME AFTERTHOUGHTS...
We do not need two separate degrees of firmness in our bed... we both like it the same way... but if we DID? It occurred to me that people could buy two separate twin bed sized, inexpensive air mattresses... and squeeze them side-by-side into a king-sized waterbed frame, inflate them to different degrees, cover them with a king-sized mattress pad, and then the goose feather pillow top thing, and added loose-fitting quilted king-sized mattress pad and have an absolutely great bed for less than $350!
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Epinions.com ID:
heidigarofalo
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Member: Heidi Guedel Garofalo
Location: Anthony, Florida, USA
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
Happy wife; Veteran Feature Film Animator; Sculptor; writer; technophile; animal lover; eternal inner child.
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