Our Free? Bed

My husband and I have slept together on a double ensemble bed for the last seven years.  There was nothing really wrong with it, we are both small people and it was snuggly and comfortable.  But when my sister-in-law recently downsized she purchased a double bed and offered us her queen bed.  We thought, hey for nothing, it wouldn’t hurt to try it.

Trying it involved hauling the extremely heavy latex mattress into the stationwagon, dumping it on the lounge room floor and sleeping out there for a few nights.  We decided that it was hard but the extra space was nice so we got my brother’s mate to move the bed base over to our place in his ute in exchange for giving him our double bed.  A pretty good deal really – all up it cost nothing and we didn’t even have to get rid of our old bed.

Well not exactly nothing because of course we then needed to buy new sheets, blankets, doona, etc.  One of my current projects is to make a king size doona cover because I haven’t been able to find a pre-made one that suits our bedroom.

The bed didn’t stop being hard either.  I know it’s supposed to be good to sleep on a hard bed but I’ve honestly never slept on a harder bed anywhere before.  After a few weeks of both having very sore backs all day, we were seriously considering buying a whole new mattress.  We tried putting our old queen doona under the mattress protector for extra padding and that seems satisfactory for now.  After a few months of sleeping on it I’ve gotten used to it and will probably find every other bed uncomfortably soft from now on.

Another disadvantage of the new bed are the square top pillars at the foot of the bed which are particularly dangerous for our toddler and my thighs, especially in the middle of the night.

However, one of the big advantages (other than all the extra room) is the extra storage space.  Yay!  It’s quite a high bed and will fit at least 9 x 52L storage boxes underneath it.  With storage places hard to come by in our house, this is a big bonus.  As I continue to declutter and organise the house I’m sure it won’t take long to fill up this extra space.