I’m talking about mattresses, not toilets.

Because we were not planning on sleeping on a $15 Wal-Mart Special air-bed forever, we looked around for a nice inexpensive mattress that would last allotted 8-10 years and allow us to have a good-night’s sleep.

The other night, thanks to our cat’s undying desire to claw everything, instead of waking up on the damned air mattress, we woke up on the floor. I’m sure there’s a demented Red Green / Dave Ramsey fan out there who would fill up the bath tub and methodically dunk the deflated air mattress into the water looking for air bubbles, and thus, the hole … (and then fix the hole with some duct tape).

Because we’re not that crazy and this time we actually had some cash, we started shopping around for a brand new mattress. After looking around, we realized that decent mattresses start at around $400. And no, we weren’t considering buying a used mattress to save money, ew, gross.

We were ready to unload $600-700 on a nice set (frame/box/mattress), which we did. If you spread the seven hundred bucks over eight years, you’d end up ‘paying’ $7.30 per month … a small price to pay for a good night’s sleep. Though I knew that markups on commercial mattresses reach sometimes as much as 400%, I had to bite the bullet and not go for the cheapest one.

I know there are people out there who would chastise us for spending ‘that much’ on a mattress. Those are the people who think ‘while you’re asleep, you don’t care what you’re alseep on‘. I used to think like that, too … until I got this mattress.

Turns out, it does matter what you sleep on. You will not derive the same sleeping experience from a $200 twin as you would from a $600 queen (unless the room is spinning because you’re drunk). You probably will be more tired and slightly achey after sleeping on a cheap mattress. I should note that age makes a difference – when I was 18, I could pass out on a wooden plank, and catch some Grade A sleep. Now I’m selling out and buying Beautyrest‘s because my shoulder hurts in the morning … and I’m still not that old!

As far as the guts of a mattress go, I liked the Mashal Coil (pocketed coil) idea because of motion separation (one person can get in and out of bed without disturbing the other) … so I immediately started researching Simmons. They just seemed more credible. They invented Marshal Coils and they manufacture their own springs (unlike the other boys who get theirs from one company, Leggett and Platt). Their units are decently priced and provide the level of comfort we were looking for.

Now that we got our new bed, I’m actually looking forward to going to bed at night. I seriously resented sleeping because it just wasn’t that comfortable.

To those people passed out on the hand-me-down singles and twins right now, the eighteen-year-old Max from eight years ago salutes you!