Any thoughts?
I tend towards firm. Our last mattress was a bed in the box like 7 6 years ago and it just isn’t working out for me anymore (and yes, DH now has a cpap machine). Last time we tried to buy a mattress it was a huge hassle and we tried the three (all pretty small) places in town but they had limited selection and two of the places had obnoxiously pushy salespeople.
Another possibility would be to turn over our mattress– it is one sided, and the other side is hard something. I didn’t have any back pain sleeping on that side but it wasn’t particularly comfortable and DH wasn’t crazy about it. It was a bit better putting a thick comforter underneath me, but that wasn’t really sustainable (it moved in the night). But it does suggest that maybe the hard top plus a mattress topper under the fitted protector thingy might be a way forward.
Are you happy with your mattress? How do you go about buying a new one? What brand do you have and how long has it lasted? Any tips for getting longer life out of a one-sided foam mattress?
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
May 24, 2024 at 3:09 am
I have a firm mattress but with a thick pillow top, so I can side sleep without shoulder pain. I think it’s a sealy. It was near the top end on price of the non foam mattresses. When I was younger, I liked them as firm as possible but my joints need some cushion these days. Whenever I’ve slept on a marshmallowy soft bed, I get terrible lower back pain the next day.
My MIL got a higher end foam mattress. She said it took a while to get used to it but loves it now. I didn’t really like the feel of them. Don’t know the brand but it was one she tried in a store not the mail order ones. She doesn’t move at all when she sleeps and I toss and turn a lot. I think that is the difference between our preferences. The bed is super comfortable once you sink in and mold into your spot, but if you are moving all night, you don’t have as nice of a cocoon effect. We both used a small mom and pop dealer in town.
I remember when I got my mom her first good mattress after a lifetime of sleeping on junk. She cried and couldn’t believe what a difference it made. Happy to hear you are upgrading.
May 24, 2024 at 5:36 am
I wouldn’t call it upgrading. We have always bought the best mattress we could find even in grad school when we couldn’t really afford it. This last mattress experience wasn’t as good because the shops in town aren’t great, so we tried a bed in a box, and apparently it didn’t last as long as our previous two purchases.
May 24, 2024 at 5:16 am
My husband prefers a firm mattress and we have purchased foam mattresses from Amazon that we have been very happy with for not that much money. IKEA also has decent mattresses.
May 24, 2024 at 7:09 am
Weirdly enough, DH and I are using the king bed mattress that as far as I can recall, my parents slept on throughout my lifetime — so it’s more than 5 decades old and it works fine for us. Not sure of the brand (I could check), one of the major ones, but I’m skeptical that whatever company it is would still make things the same way as it did back then anyway.
My parent did buy a new mattress a couple of years ago from a local mattress store and found that to be a good experience and got what seems to be a nice mattress but … that’s not that helpful, sorry about that. Good luck figuring out next steps.
May 24, 2024 at 7:19 am
Yeah, they don’t make things like they used to.
May 24, 2024 at 11:29 am
Yeah, I also, no joke, have hung onto their refrigerator. Frigidaire, same vintage. Not as energy efficient as newer ones (and it is not our primary fridge), but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.
May 24, 2024 at 11:45 am
Our fridge is 22 years old but newer ones break!
May 24, 2024 at 3:44 pm
Our stove is – no kidding – 70 years old (it came with our house when we bought it! It started playing up last year so we looked at getting a new one but we were looking at spending $$$$ and still having an annoying 6-inch gap (the old beast is 39 inches wide). So we ended up spending about $200 on repairs instead and haven’t looked back :D
May 24, 2024 at 5:43 pm
Wow!
May 24, 2024 at 2:24 pm
I’m also on a decades-old parental mattress. I think it works for us because it’s directly on a platform. So I also have no good advice.
May 24, 2024 at 8:29 am
We got a sleep number mattress a few years ago, during one of the holiday sales. I bet there is one for this weekend. They are much pricier than comparably sized mattresses, but it allows us to vary the firmness. I have no regrets (and I tend to have a hard time with “extravagant” purchases given my lower middle class upbringing). It’s been nice in unexpected ways – changing the firmness when sick with covid or flu is surprisingly helpful. Same with soreness due to exercise or (more often) aging. We didn’t get one that raised or lowered, and I don’t still don’t think that was a mistake.
Not that this part matters, but we bought because BIL raved about his. Since, my sister and another friend bought, so we ended up getting free sleep number pillows with the credits from the referrals. (We didn’t do any sales jobs, just told people who talked about getting a new mattress in front of us how happy we were).
May 24, 2024 at 8:34 am
Our in-laws have a sleep number mattress because they have very different preferences. MIL is not as happy with it now as when they bought it but I can’t remember why. But it may just be at the end of its lifespan.
May 26, 2024 at 1:27 pm
We have a 15-year-old IKEA latex mattress that is still great. I will never forget how old it is because I demanded that we replace our not-that-old innerspring mattress when I was pregnant with our middle kid. We rotate and flip it every once in a while either when I remember or when my shoulder or hip starts to be sore when I wake up. Then it’s fine. When we eventually have to replace it (if?) I will get another latex mattress. You just have to know it’s hard, like you can’t hurl yourself onto it and have that feel good.
May 27, 2024 at 1:31 pm
Select Comfort (air filled) mattress with dual controls has served my household well. After about 20 years one side had a very slow leak so it needed a new air sack but the pump has carried on, and the enclosure. We ordered what we needed on line, and it was delivered. They are easy to move, also.
June 5, 2024 at 9:42 pm
Foam/latex are nonstarters for me because I’m allergic. We got a great mattress from Costco (I’m a Costco cult member) and it had better last because we can’t lift it.