Just an Ordinary Monday

This Monday found us in a cage match with one very large, heavy latex mattress. We bought it at Ikea 10 minutes before the store closed and struggled to figure out how to get it home. We were not particularly prepared, because we assumed that like all Ikea projects, it would be rolled up or smooshed and very portable.

We couldn't have been more wrong. Even though we got a latex mattress and not a spring one, it came in its final size in a flimsy cardboard box and weighed about 110 pounds. The mattress itself was so floppy and dense that it was difficult to maneuver. D thought we would be able to fold it in half and shove it into his hatchback, but I worried that once it was out of the box (but still wrapped in plastic), we would discover that it would not actually fit in the car and that it wouldn't be able to get back in the box.

By now the store was about to close and we had to decide if we needed to return it then and there and take on the challenge another day or somehow get it home. Delivery fees had never looked so welcoming.

But with a little rope and really minimal knowledge of knot-tying (and a short, slow drive home), this was how we arrived back at our house:

Getting it into the house and up the stairs, especially once the cardboard gave way to a dense lump of foam, was another challenge. Pushing on foam does pretty much nothing except compress the foam. We had to pull it everywhere, but without ripping any of the cover. By the time we got it onto the bed frame, we were exhausted--but too sweaty to collapse on the mattress.

We officially try it out this Friday night. In a meantime we are amassing random bedding needs: a comforter, a duvet cover, clips to hold the cover in place, mattress pads, and decorative pillows.


The mattress can be exchanged within 90 days if we don't like it. After our exciting evening, we are pretty sure that this is a scam, and that mattresses are made deliberately heavy and awkward to help "convince" people that the mattress is great. I don't think you could pay me to haul that thing back out to the car...