Get A Cal-King Mattress Free
Mattresses Can be very expensive. When my wife and I were getting close to our wedding date we decided to look for a bed… we learned that a good mattress is very expensive. Being the flat broke young couple that we are we had to come up with other resources to get a nice mattress.
STEP 1: Get The Mattress
Scope out your local furniture stores for used mattresses. Some stores take used mattresses and dispose of them, and occasionally a nice one will come through their doors, but they aren't concerned with used mattresses so they will dispose of the nice one just the same. Ask a manager how they handle used mattresses, and if you can see any they are getting rid of. It helps to have a friend in the furniture industry.
Once you find some used mattresses you need to pick from them the best possible mattress. We checked for a few things as we looked through used mattresses.
- Appearance and size - We examined further the mattresses that looked the best at first glance and were in the size range we desired
- Smell - We counted out any mattress that had any sort of cigarette smoke or hotel-like odor to it.
- Structure – This meant physically handling the mattress to test the bed for any structural flaws. The less wear and tear the better.
- Comfort – of course the mattress needs to be comfortable
- Box Springs Condition – will they support the mattress correctly?
Don't stress out too much about stains those can be cleaned and covered.
After you pick your mattress you need to get it to your home. If you don't have a truck or trailer you can do what we did and get a friend who has one to help you.
STEP 2: Clean The Mattress
Cleaning the mattress is very important. Generally you don't know where the mattress has been and who has been sleeping on it. No one wants to sleep on a filthy mattress. It took my wife and I about 2 hours to clean our mattress, but it turned out great!
We started by thoroughly vacuuming the mattress using the hose and brush attachments. It is important to be sure to vacuum under the edge of the pillow top if your mattress has one.
After we vacuumed the mattress we sprayed the entire mattress with Spray and Wash, which is a stain remover for clothing.
Once the Spray and Wash had soaked into the stains we used a steam cleaner to clean the mattress. Instead of using just the normal cleaning solution we added bleach to the formula. A steam cleaner with a hose and brush attachment is effective for this. All there was left to do was let the bed sit and dry in our living room overnight.
Your mattress may have an odor that smells like cleaner when you are done. If this is the case use some scented linen spray on the mattress.
STEP 3: Get Coverings For The Mattress
Once again being the flat broke young couple that we are, my wife and I had to come up with a good way to get high quality coverings for our new bed. We wanted nice soft sheets, a down comforter, and 2 king size pillows.
We lucked out with the comforter by putting it on our wedding registry, but later found some comforters at reasonable prices.
For sheets we had to shop around a bit. We eventually found a king size set of black satin sheets with 2 king sized pillow cases included for $20. This was a much better price than the $60 to $80 sets we found at most general stores. We also found 2 king size pillows for $8 each. The king size sheets fit a Cal-King bed just fine.
The store we found them at was ROSS. They sell overstock items at reduced prices. You never know what you will find there so I try to go often and see what they are selling. Other similar stores are TJ MAXX and Marshalls.
Now we have a very nice bed set-up that would have cost us around $1800 at retail prices, but it only cost us about $50 and about 6 hours of our time.
