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What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

fivethirtyeight.com

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Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#51

Post by fnordian_slip »

ska wrote: post #29
leetcrew wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ultimately people prefer not to stop and think about the fact that hotel beds are kinda gross, since there's really no alternative if you want to travel to a place where you don't know anyone. but even if you do acknowledge this, it's not nearly as bad to sleep in a "dirty" bed for a few nights as it would be to own one and use it every night.

I once met someone who always traveled with something a bit like a thin cotton (silk?) full body sleeping bag (like a mummy bag). Idea was you never physically touched the hotel bed. It was apparently expensive. The funny thing to me was the she stayed in high end hotels pretty exclusively who I think you can at least be taking a fairly aggressive kill-it-with-bleach approach to laundry. I wondered if there was a wal…

There are brand ones that are rather expensive, but at least in Europe I know that decathlon makes really cheap silk and cotton sleeping bag liners, because that's where I got mine.

They are made to go into sleeping bags, and I love mine for that use case (less sweat and dirt in your down bag), but I have also used them in dirt cheap hostels.

In one seedy hotel in Italy several people in my party had a lot of bedbug bites, but I can't say for sure if it actually protected me. I expect I was probably just lucky that there were none in my room.

Still, it's a little over 100 grams (less than 4 ounces) and it makes dirty mattresses in shitty hostels bearable.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#52

Post by minikites »

sauwan wrote: post #50
fwip wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's risky for the charity. For instance, if the mattress has bedbugs, it stands a good chance of contaminating everything they've got in storage, requiring them to purge their entire inventory, sanitize, and build up from scratch again.

Can't they set up an offsite hotbox to get rid of the bedbugs before it gets onsite? Surely someone could set up a mobile truck that can come, park, and heat up 15 mattresses for the few hours it takes to kill or drive off the bedbugs, no?

Can you ensure that this process is followed fully and correctly all of the time?

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#53

Post by mech1234 »

Get a firm or very firm innerspring mattress from IKEA. You can do this for less than $300 and it will fit in the back of a sedan in it's roll-up-package.

Sleep on it for a bit. If you don't like the feel, which you probably won't, add a memory foam mattress topper for ~$50. Use a thicker or thinner topper to suit your needs.

Congrats! Because your mattress is firm, its foam will not break down for a long, long time. Sleep easy knowing you didn't waste stupid amounts of money and that your mattress will last essentially forever.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#54

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

ghaff wrote: post #42
ska wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once met someone who always traveled with something a bit like a thin cotton (silk?) full body sleeping bag (like a mummy bag). Idea was you never physically touched the hotel bed. It was apparently expensive. The funny thing to me was the she stayed in high end hotels pretty exclusively who I think you can at least be taking a fairly aggressive kill-it-with-bleach approach to laundry. I wondered if there was a wal…

Sleep sacks can actually be required for hostels. ( http://www.reidsguides.com/hostels/sleepsacks.html ) I imagine a silk one could be expensive but they're pretty inexpensive for the most part. That said, as someone who travels a lot, when I look at travelers' catalogs like Magellan at a lot of the safety, germ protection, etc. items, part of me thinks that people who buy all that stuff are probably better off just…

They're definitely abusing the word 'most' there. I've stayed in easily 20 hostels at this point, and not once has a 'sleep sack' been required. And in all my hostel research, I have never stumbled across someone mentioning they needed one.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#55

Post by emodendroket »

jacob019 wrote: post #14

Forgive me if this is off-topic. I am currently in the market for a queen size mattress in a box. The last one that I bought on Amazon was perfect, it cost about $300. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F8NNL8X It is no longer available. Now it seems that you can get a decent one for under $250. Here are some that I found: Ashley: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0777K9RGX Vibe: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074NDQ143 PrimaSleep: h…

I bought an Avocado mattress in the strength of Consumer Reports' recommendation and, while it's certainly not the cheapest option, it is very comfortable.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#56

Post by zabzonk »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #33
Yhippa wrote: post #24

I bought one of these over a decade ago from Costco. It had a defect in it but I never really pursued returning it. I had no clue how I'd get it out of my house by myself. Use a chainsaw or machete to cut it into blocks and then toss it out the window and then take it to the dump? It was really heavy. Much heavier than normal mattresses. At least it seemed much more flexible to bend around corners.

I once had a loveseat that I couldn't get out of a studio apartment without moving almost everything. Since I was a bit bored at the time, I slowly carved up the entire thing with a Swiss Army knife w/ the saw & scissors extensions. Was actually kind of fun.

In Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1970s, a friend of mine inherited a flat and contents but no money. It was an extremely cold winter and he ended up chopping half the furniture to pieces (it was the typical hideous stuff you got in flats in Edinburgh back then) and burning it in the fire-place to keep warm.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#57

Post by anonAndOn »

deftnerd wrote: post #41

It feels like there might be other possibly uses of old or unwanted foam mattresses. Perhaps they can be cut down to standard sizes for home insulation batting? As insulation between raised garden bed containers and the ground? Insulation between the ground and a fish tank in an aquaponics setup? While there might be better solutions for all of those things, if these materials are going to end up in the landfill and…

Although it's a bit of work to cut the foam layers into hundreds of little blocks, you can turn an unwanted foam mattress into a decent bean bag.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#58

Post by reaperducer »

This isn't exclusive to mail order mattresses.

I went to a big-name department store just last week and bought a mattress. For the first time, I chose a "memory foam" mattress because I liked how it felt in the store. (Thought the traditional spring mattress felt more familiar and "right," there's something about the foam that was nice.)

When the giant delivery truck arrived three days later, there was the usual box spring, which I guess is what necessitated the truck, but then the delivery guys brought in a small box the size of a chair and that's what contained the shrunken mattress.

I asked what happens to the mattress if I decide that memory foam isn't for me after all, and they said it depends on the brand. Some go to charity, some go to an exporter for resale overseas, and some get shredded and made into new mattresses.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#59

Post by reaperducer »

Reedx wrote: post #25

“In California, a lot of charities can’t accept a used mattress,” So those in need of mattresses don't get them and more likely to go to landfill... regardless of condition. Are used mattresses really that risky? Are charities themselves not able to make a reasonable judgement call on what they accept?

I've noticed this is very jurisdictional.

I recently needed to get rid of a mattress set, and looked online. There are dozens of pages claiming that $Charity_X won't take mattresses, and dozens more claiming it will.

That's the problem with the internet - it's sometimes not specific enough. Due to local laws, the charity in question doesn't take mattresses. Fortunately, in mine it does as long as there are no stains and they're in pretty good shape. It gets the mattresses fumigated and uses them in its homeless shelters and battered women's shelters.

Edit: I suspect the charities that won't take mattresses are ones that run primarily on resale revenue, and not those that run their own housing.

Re: What happens to a mail-order mattress after you return it

#60

Post by ghaff »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #54
ghaff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep sacks can actually be required for hostels. ( http://www.reidsguides.com/hostels/sleepsacks.html ) I imagine a silk one could be expensive but they're pretty inexpensive for the most part. That said, as someone who travels a lot, when I look at travelers' catalogs like Magellan at a lot of the safety, germ protection, etc. items, part of me thinks that people who buy all that stuff are probably better off just…

They're definitely abusing the word 'most' there. I've stayed in easily 20 hostels at this point, and not once has a 'sleep sack' been required. And in all my hostel research, I have never stumbled across someone mentioning they needed one.

I don't think I have on the relatively limited occasions I've stayed in a hostel (or a mountain hut). That said, I'd certainly heard of sleep sacks sometimes being used/required in hostels. So it can't be all that rare--or maybe it used to be more common.
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