Bed Shopping Mantra

You never really know a person until you go bed shopping with them. Our mattress is 12 years old with sagging support that makes for very achy joints in the morning.

We looked online and found some sales and headed out. I was thinking about the nursery rhyme by the end of the first stop:  'Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean, and so betwixt the two of them they licked the platter clean.'

He wants pillow soft, sink-down-to-your-ribs kind of comfort, and I want camping cot hard. Our task was to find a balanced compromise. Heaven help us.

Sleep Train had a warehouse sized showroom of floor model beds and a very educated mattress salesgirl Anna whom we adopted as our own. Coil density, foam density, latex and memory foam and pillow top or plush, we learned it all. We tried it all.

After two cups of coffee and 40 beds later, it was settled: a Stearns and Foster pillow top firm, with initial softness for him and a nice firm mattress below for me. We were soothed by the 100 day sleep-on-it-and-exchange-it-if-needed guarantee. That's a good thing because bed shopping is a lot like car shopping: they're all so much better than what you've got, it's sometimes hard to tell.

I have to admit the first night was amazing. I awoke with no hip pain at all. I hopped out of bed completely ignoring the groans coming from the other side. Randy awoke with my hip and shoulder pain. Well hells bells, that's no good. And so it was back to the drawing board for us. This bed picking business is harder than it looks!

TempurPedic and Sleep Number beds are supposed to be individually adaptable to each person's sleeping comfort style, but TempurPedic is outrageously priced and we didn't like the feel of sleeping on a pillow of air. Our top choice was a Beautyrest NxG that we couldn't talk Anna out of, although we tried: it was a demo model with half plush soft on the left and more firm on the right.

I mean we are talking marital bliss here!! We compromised on a Beautyrest pillowtop with more plushness for him and double the coil density and a cool (no sweat) memory foam for me. After all, I'm still summering: comforter on, off, on, off, sheet on/blanket off, blanket on/foot out. Poor guy.