Mattress Bleg

August 4, 2012


Did I really need to go on vacation to have time to post to "Let's Do It"?  Apparently, yes.


Let's just say that life has been galloping by.  Every day for the last two weeks I have glimpsed bloggable ideas, sometimes as I walk Willie and Teddy, sometimes as I ferry Maximillian around town, sometimes when I'm two-thirds of the way through a scintillating conference call.  I just haven't had time to rif on any of them.


Maybe I'll catch up this week.  Maybe not.


I want to start with a simple, straight forward plea for crowd sourcing (and the hat tip in this case goes to my buddy Janice S. who actually did this on FB earlier this week).


First off, an explanation for bleg (blog + beg).  I don't remember where I first saw this.  I think maybe I read it on Paul Krugman's site a couple of years ago, but Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution blog, blegs when he travels to learn where he should eat (or not eat).  I have been wanting to consult my friends in the same way.  .  . and Janice offered up the perfect bleg topic.


Mattresses.  


In 1990, Walter and I moved to Nashville, and since the generous Owen School of Management was picking up the check, we moved everything we owned (which is another story about how our furniture detoured through Graceland for several days because our mover was also an Elvis impersonator and our move coincided with Elvis Week--coming this year in just five days).  The next year, when Walter returned to A&M, our mattress stayed with me, and he went to Sears and bought one for our Bryan house (Can you read the subtext here that I was not involved in the purchase process, which didn't matter a huge amount, since sleeping is one of my best things).


Somehow, when we moved completely back to Bryan a few years later, we gave our pretty good mattress with a pillow top, to our neighbors rather than switching the firm and adequate mattress out and giving it away.  


Twenty-one years later we are getting around to thinking about starting the process of considering whether we are up to the challenge of buying a new mattress.  Really.  It's about time.  Except the process is so confounding and confusing, not to mention expensive--firm, soft, pillow top, memory foam, air chambers, too many brands, hard to compare.  Ach!


I've slept on three different mattresses over the last three nights.  They are all better than my ancient Sears no-frills mattress, but are any of them the one I want to spend the next twenty years sleeping on?  How can I even tell?  Even if I found THE ONE, these brands/models aren't available in stores because they are made specifically for the different hotel chains.


It's enough to make me say naughty words.


Here comes the bleg (and note that it comes with a "please" and whipped cream and a cherry on top):


Tell me about your mattress:  

• what do you like about it?
• what did you consider as important in deciding when you bought it?
• do you feel strongly enough to recommend for or against? 

Please help me.  I'm so confused.