Featherbedding

I am all in favour of it. Completely! I just wish I had known about it earlier.

No, not that kind of featherbedding, the unionist stuff:

• "Featherbedding is a pejorative term for the practice of hiring more workers than are needed to perform a given job, or to adopt work procedures which appear pointless, complex and time-consuming merely to employ additional workers."

The real kind of featherbedding--sleeping on a bed of feathers.

If you want sticker shock, forget cars. Go and price out a mattress these days. When one buys a mattress every 20 years or so, one does not really watch their prices that closely. I've seen some of the high end ones priced near $3,000!

Marshall (my brand), Sealy, Serta, Simmons, Stearns and Foster, Monarch... even Trump-branded, who knows anything about mattresses.

I still remember the commercial with the bowling balls and pins on a mattress and now we have foam-type ones that are NASA recognized.

I was not sure that I needed a new mattress but my back was hurting a bit. After doing some research at a mattress site, spending a lot of money on a mattress that could sag early on did not make a lot of sense. Rather the suggestion was to buy a mid-priced one and get a topper. If the topper failed after a few years, it could be replaced at a fraction of the price of a new mattress.

I happened to be flipping the TV dial and saw that the Shopping Channel was offering a featherbed at a good price BUT since I had no idea what it was like and was not sure if I would be allergic to the feathers, I decided to buy one in person at a store where I could return it easily if it did not work out.

So off I went to Sears at Devonshire Mall to get one before I bought a new mattress. I decided to buy a more expensive one, from Pacific Coast Feather Company. Fortunately, it was on sale, 40% off so the price was not too bad. (NOTE Macys was selling it online at an even better price plus an additional 20% off but I had no US address to which I could send it). Believe it or not, Sears did NOT stock Featherbed covers so I had to get one via JC Penney to get the manufacturer's cover. They actually ship directly to Canada.

Who needed a new mattress! From the reviews I read, sleeping on a Pacific Coast featherbed was like sleeping on a cloud. How right they were!

Taking it out of the package, it fluffed up on its own into double or triple the packed size thickness in about an hour or so. (I defy a mere mortal to try and put it back in to the package!) Putting it into the cover was a snap as well. Treat it like a big pillow and slide up the cover.

The first time sleeping in it, it felt so good. It felt warm and snuggly on a cold evening. I seemed to sink in but the mattress below was firm enough that the combination of firm mattress and soft feathers just made everything seem perfect. No sagging feeling.

Normally, I toss and turn before falling asleep. That's harder to do now and requires some effort to change positions because the featherbed fits to your shape and you do sink in a bit. However, it was NOT a problem since I fell asleep almost immediately!

And the sleep, it was a very deep and restful one. The bed is supposed to "cushion pressure points like your shoulders and hips" whatever that means. All I know is that I have never felt so well rested when I got up in the morning and with no aches and back pains. No allergic reaction to the feathers either.

Pounding it a bit like a pillow fluffs it up again in the morning and I expect that fluffing it when changing sheets will help keep it in good shape for years to come.

Speaking of sheets, one needs the extra depth fitted ones to deal with the extra featherbed height on top of the mattress. I know a place that has a good Martex sheet sale fairly often and there is a 10% discount for opening a charge account but that is for another BLOG!

Good sleep and saving money, what a combo. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.