Microfiber Sheets: A Public Service Announcement

I’m taking a bloggy break this week, but I thought it would be fun to re-post some of my older stuff.  Happy day friends!

When we got married ten and a half years ago, we were broke college kids.  We had ZERO furniture (we had always lived in apartments that came furnished), but we managed to scrape together most of the needed pieces from hand me downs and fill in the blanks with Ikea.

But we were still down a mattress.

So the day after we got home from our Jamaican honeymoon, still sun kissed and smelling like sea salt, we went mattress shopping.

In those earliest of days, in an effort to show my new husband how agreeable and compromising and amazingly go-with-the-flow I was, I agreed to the bed that I thought was much too hard.  He had married well.  See how I just let you pick the mattress?

“Sure honey!  Whatever you want!  I’m sure it’ll be great!”

Silly, naive, dumb, dumb, dumb little girl.

If given the opportunity, I would slap my ten year younger self.

I figured I would get used to it.  The mattress would soften up with time.  How bad could it be?

We were in love.  And I still had braids in my hair.  And a rocking tan.  And zero stretch marks.

Again, I want to slap Younger Me.

Well, that mattress never did soften up.  Nor did my body just “get used to” sleeping on a concrete block.

In fact, ten and a half years and a body that has carried four babies (including a set of twins) later…that mattress was kicking. my. butt.

My pasty white, stretch marked, hair in a messy ponytail butt.

You know you need a new bed when you find yourself daydreaming about the hotel we stayed at when we went to Disneyland.  Because it was the best night of sleep you’ve had in a really long time.

So, ten and a half years later, we went to the mattress store again.

Very, very different people.

And HOLY MOLY.  When you aren’t young, firm, dumb 21 year olds just looking to buy whatever…mattresses are EXPENSIVE.

TRAUMAAAAAA.

I still haven’t recovered from the shock.

In fact, I made us come home without buying anything.  And then I slept in our bed again.  And we went back the next day.

But the trauma continued.  Because we decided to upgrade from the Queen size we could barely sandwich into that teeny itty bitty 500 square foot one bedroom apartment…and go baller status to the California King.  I mean, you’re spending the money anyway, right?

Besides, Saturday mornings with four kids piled on the bed is a mishmash of arms and legs and dangerously sharp elbows and knobby knees every which way with protests of “she’s in my spot!” and “but there’s no room for me!” and “he’s TOUCHING me!”

But you know what happens when you buy a bigger mattress?

You also gotta buy a new mattress pad, and comforter, and sheets, and blankets, and even a new bed skirt.  My homemade headboard is even too small now.

TRAUMAAAAA.

I knew this would be part of the process when we decided to go bigger, but it didn’t make the shopping any easier.

At several stores, I saw sheets labeled Microfiber.  Hmmm…I’d never heard of microfiber sheets.

There was no thread count listed.  That’s weird…

I unzipped the package…ooooohhhhhhh….they were SOFT.  So soft.

And wait for it…$24.99 for Cal King size!

I didn’t know why on earth these deliciously soft sheets were a fraction of the price of even low thread count sets, but I bought them anyway.  Because I was still traumatized by this whole new mattress/bedding/EVERYTHING adventure.

Dumb, dumb, dumb ten years older self.

I was so excited to sleep in our new bed the first night.  I crawled in eagerly.

It was DIVINE.

Until…a few hours later when I woke up HOT.

Not just normal temperature hot…but a weird, stuffy, I can’t breathe, I feel like I’m suffocating kind of hot.

I pulled one leg out from under the covers…immediate relief.  But then I was too cold.  Went back under.

Wait, I’m dying of stuffy hotness.  What the heck?

I was up. all. night. long.

I couldn’t sleep from the weird, stuffy, hot, I can’t breathe feeling.

After laying there for hours, I finally grabbed my phone at 3 am and googled “Microfiber sheets”.

Oh friends.

You know why there is no thread count listed on the package?

You know why they are so stinking cheap?

BECAUSE THEY ARE POLYESTER.

Not cotton.  NOT cotton.  THEY ARE NOT COTTON, PEOPLE!!!!

And you know a funny little fact about Polyester?

It doesn’t BREATHE.

It was like trying to sleep in a cheap Halloween costume.

You know the kind you buy at the Halloween store in the plastic bag for $20?

Imagine sleeping in a cheap Halloween costume of a Snuggie.

Or your grandma’s pantsuit from the 60′s.

DYING.

I pulled those dang sheets off and returned the set I thankfully hadn’t washed yet.

And bought COTTON sheets.

Sheets that were on clearance at Target.  Not the high thread count I’m usually snobby about.  NOR ARE THEY EVEN WHITE!!!!

But I’ll upgrade in a few months.  Or ask for nice sheets for my birthday or something.  Or maybe Restoration Hardware will sponsor my blog and give me sheets in exchange.

A girl can dream.

Learn from me friends: mattresses are expensive.  And microfiber sheets are a SHAM.

(Now I know some of you will comment and tell me “Jeannett!  We have microfiber sheets and we just love them!”  And I say to you: I am jealous.  Because I wish I could love $25 sheets.  But apparently I’m too high maintenance for that.)

(Also, I had a class in college where the professor told us that she will only wear 100% cotton clothing because the synthetic fibers of polyester and the like don’t catch on fire…but MELT onto your body…and cause the worst burns.  All I could think of was our sheets melting onto our entire bodies like a less delicious version of fondant.  Although fondant is gross, so that’s not hard to do.  You know what I mean.  But basically, even if I didn’t sweat like a hog in the microfiber, I probably would have just been up all night from the horror movie playing in my mind.  Double whammy.)

Happy Day.

I hope you don’t need a new bed.

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jeannett

I'm a mom to four. A wife to one. I believe in story. I love telling you about mine and would love to hear yours. There's really no sense in wasting our suffering and not sharing in each other's joy. We're all in this together...even if it doesn't always feel like it.

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