Saturday, March 12, 2005

Mattress Logic

I went out and bought myself a lovely foam mattress topper. (Discovering, coincidentally, that the bus fare went up 50 cents at the beginning of the month. Joy.) I went hog wild, and bought the model one step up from the egg crate version. (~$14 instead of ~$7.) This mattress pad said it was "now long enough to fit twin XL mattresses!" Fine... that's easily fixed with a pair of scissors. :)

I get home and open up the pad to let it expand. Hmmm... a bit narrower than the bed. It must just need time to expand. Doesn't smell too bad... nifty!

A while later... it' still narrower than the bed. What the?!? Why do they always make mattress pads narrower than the mattress? As if a twin isn't narrow enough. Sheesh. *sigh* Then I notice one of the pamphlets says the pad is purposely made smaller than your mattress so your sheets still fit.

Sounds good, right?

Not so fast.

Most mattresses these days (except the cheap ones like I have) are "extra deep". So most sheets are now made to fit "extra deep" mattresses, unless they're cheap sheets. Those of us with the thin mattresses just tuck the excess in. Or, if we have the really cheap ones, we likely have sheet clips too, since the really cheap sheets also have crummy elastic. So, I would think our sheets would still fit, unless we already have an extra deep mattress. Of course, if we already have an extra deep mattress, that means that our mattress is probably fancy and has a pillow top to begin with... and so we wouldn't be buying $14 foam mattress pads.

Thanks for trying, mattress pad manufacturers, but next time, think just a little bit harder. I'd prefer to have that extra two inches. (And, if, for some reason I didn't... well, now, that's what scissors are for.)

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