Living Green

How will I ever decide?  Buying a mattress feels like something that should be taken seriously.  I mean, we as humans spend up to 9hrs a night sleeping on this piece of something.  Yes, Tom and I need 8-9hrs of sleep and we normally get it.  Go ahead make fun of us, we’re used to it.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane…I grew up sleeping on futon beds.  I slept on a futon in a tent until I was 2.  I then graduated to a futon on top of a futon-type frame (frame with slats) until I was 12, and pretty much continued the trend until the present day.

I didn’t seem to mind:

Jazzy likes futons!

I am now 26, an independent thinker, and I can do differently.  I want different.  I want a headboard, a box spring, and a sleigh bed that magically lifts you 15ft off the floor.  Why not do it differently now?  OR we can just go back to a futon bed on a futon-type frame.  Yes, that feels right.

We were sleeping on a Latex (probably not 100%) mattress covered in some flame-retardant material, when it mildewed and left our lives for good.  We knew we wanted to go as ‘green’ as possible with our next mattress, and in the current market there are actually lots of suppliers with green choices.

Once I started researching, I was shocked to find out that bedrooms can be the most toxic place in your home, with your mattress containing more chemicals than a 50gal drum of oil.  Huh?  What does that even mean?

We wanted another Latex mattress, but this time we made sure it was 100% Natural Latex–made right from the milk sap of the rubber tree (I know it sounds like some mythical creature).  100% Natural Latex is actually a great product: anti-microbial (no dust mites), anti-mold, and chemical-free.  None of those nasty carcinogenic chemicals found in petroleum-based synthetic mattresses.

Are you overwhelmed yet?

After we narrowed down our mattress material, we also had to think about what covered the actual mattress.  We went with a 100% organic wool/cotton blend.  Wool is great because it’s naturally flame resistant, mold resistant, absorbs moisture, but repels water, and is pretty sustainable.  100% Organic cotton means it hasn’t been treated with a host of chemicals like fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides–all are carcinogenic and all off-gas for years after the mattress is purchased.

We ended up buying our final mattress over the phone from a local company called Lifekind.

Here she is, the natural beauty:

Look--humidity is down to 44%!

And that, my friends, concludes our story for now.  We’ve been sleeping on our Queen bed for a few weeks and we love, love, love it.  It’s super comfortable and as I’m sure you are all wondering, Tom and I still manage to gravitate toward the smack middle of the bed and fight each other for the space.  As the saying goes, you can take the person out of the Full bed, but you can’t take the Full bed out of the person…or something along those lines:-)