When we moved into our house, we didn’t have a mattress.  In order to sell the RV, we had to leave the mattress in it.  John and Jackie had a queen sized bed in their guest room and they let us borrow it for a while.  The only problem – it was one of the firmest mattresses we have ever slept on (or tried to).  Tom couldn’t sleep on it at all.  So, our priority rapidly became finding a bed that we were comfortable with.

It is impossible to order a comfortable mattress online.  Firmness is just too much of a personal preference.  Tom and I are both side sleepers, so we like mattresses with plenty of give.  Our last mattress (the one in the RV) was a Tempur-Pedic, which was pricey but worth it.  But Tom and I haven’t been sleeping well together.  I am a very light sleeper and an early riser.  He moves around in his sleep and is a night owl.  As we get older, a good night’s sleep is more important and, at the same time, more difficult.  So we made the bold decision to start sleeping in separate beds.

With this in mind, we went shopping.  Fortunately, there are several stores very close to where we live.

We started at The Original Mattress Factory.  After all, it is a Columbus business.  We were a little leery about laying down on a mattress in the age of Covid-19, but the salesman put our minds at ease immediately.  He gave each of us a “covid kit,” explained the different types of mattresses in his store, encouraged us to take a nap on each one, and then left us alone.  The “covid kit” had a disposable body sized sheet of thin packing foam, and another pillow sized piece for under our heads.  This allowed us to lie down on the mattresses we wanted to try without worrying about all the other people who laid on them.  We carried our own foam sheets with us from mattress to mattress.

Tom and I tried out most of the mattresses in the store.  He likes soft, memory foam mattresses and I like hybrid mattresses with some memory foam and some coil springs.  I also like my mattress just a little firmer than his.  We spent more than an hour going from mattress to mattress.  I found one that I liked very much, but Tom wanted to look at a Tempur-Pedic.  This required going to another store.

So we went to The Mattress Firm, just down the street.  They had Tempur-Pedic mattresses as well as many other brands.  We were the only people in the store, and the salesperson wouldn’t leave us alone.  She showed Tom the Tempur-Pedic, and then insisted I try a mattress.  She didn’t have a “covid kit” – she just expected us to lie down on the mattresses.  I wasn’t doing that, not after finding a mattress I liked at the other store.  Tom loved the Tempur-Pedic mattress, but when I pointed out the price ($4,000+ for the twin size) he decided that was way too much money for a mattress.  I couldn’t leave the Mattress Firm fast enough and the salesperson followed us out the door trying to entice us to buy.

When we got home, we called our salesperson from The Original Mattress Company and ordered the two mattresses we liked.  They came a few weeks after we ordered them, right on time.  The delivery men even set up the frames and put the box springs and mattresses on them.  Service we had not expected but certainly appreciated.

Tom and I are enjoying our new mattresses and sleeping much better now that we are sleeping apart.  We make sure we get plenty of snuggle time in the evenings so we don’t miss each other as much during the night.