Over the holidays I bought a new mattress. I suffer from sciatica and needed a mattress with more support and firmness. However, I didn’t want to throw away my old mattress just yet because it’ll be useful for guests once I move to a larger place. Since the old mattress is a memory foam mattress, it could be compressed and rolled up for storage.
The idea is pretty simple. You put the mattress in a mattress bag, seal the bag (except for a small opening for the vacuum hose), then vacuum the air out of the bag to shrink the mattress and roll it up. I bought a mattress bag online for $10, used packing tape for sealing, and used my old, inexpensive vacuum to do the job.
In practice, it took me a few tries to get it right. The biggest problem was getting the vacuum to continue to suck air out of the bag. I had to use the brush attachment for the vacuum hose and have the opening face the mattress. Otherwise, the sides of the bag would seal the vacuum hose due to the suction, and mattress wouldn’t shrink. Using the brush attachment did make it harder to get the hose out of the bag once I was done. Once the suction is gone, the mattress re-inflates in under a minute unless you seal the hole quickly.
The other challenging part about the process was the amount of physical labor involved. As the vacuum is working, I had to step, kneel and roll on the mattress to compress it so it can be rolled up. The toughest part was rolling the mattress. The combination of the weight and the rigidness after the mattress has been compressed makes it a workout. I’m a fairly big guy, but that part got me sweating. It probably would have been much easier if I had someone else to help me. Also a queen-size memory foam mattress is not a light piece of furniture.
After two or three tries, I finally managed to roll the mattress and seal the bag and wrap it with tape. It took a least 20 minutes of suction for the mattress to shrink enough so it can be rolled. It took me probably 1.5 hours in total. Would have been good if I had my ratchet straps to secure the mattress, but duct tape will hold for now. The rolled-up mattress is still pretty bulky, but at least I can sort of hide it behind my couch now. Hopefully the mattress will still be usable once I unwrap it.
As for my new mattress, I got an extra firm Beautyrest Platinum hybrid mattress with memory foam on top and coils in the bottom. First impressions are pretty good. It definitely has more support than my old mattress, but the top layer is soft enough to be comfortable. Hopefully the new mattress will help me sleep better.