Mattress — Blog — Healy Chen

Not twinning

Frequent listeners of podcasts (or followers of gym girls on instagram) have undoubtedly heard of EightSleep pod covers. A cooling layer between you and the bed so that you can sleep better during the hot summer days. It’s rather expensive, and the latest version even requires a subscription. But, if you live in Texas and your summers are three months of 90 degree nights, a pod cover for the bed is likely much cheaper than running air conditioning for the room.

Here in San Francisco, we really only have one week of “true” summer. And it’s during October. The one week that makes me pine for a cooling solution so I can actually sleep at night. But even if I’m willing to pay the high price, there’s a problem: EightSleep’s smallest size offering is a full. I have a twin mattress, of which I just purchased two years ago. There’s no way I am changing (read: paying even more money) that arrangement just to sleep better for a week out of the year. Maybe. Thinking about it.

To the fine folks at EightSleep: why discriminate against broke boys like me? I can’t afford a place in San Francisco with enough space to fit a full size (and above) bed. Not in this economy! I want you to shut up and take my money (thousands), yet you guys refuse to make a twin size version of your product. Or perhaps you’ve done customer studies, and people who have twin size beds (children, and space-efficient adults like me) aren’t likely to be customers. Either way, I am very disappointed.

At least my Helix mattress has a sewn-in cooling top layer. No, I don’t have a discount code for you. A website with dozens of readers is atomically insignificant to receive brand deals.

To the next twenty years

After well over two decades, it was time for a new mattress. I’ve had the same twin-sized mattress since I was in middle school. It was purchased at a Levitz store. Remember those? It and Sears was the place to go to for furniture, before IKEA took over the world. The sofa set at my parents’ house was also bought there. And it’s still going strong.

So was my old mattress. In all honesty there was nothing wrong with it. I was sleeping just fine, right up until the day I replaced it. The reason for replacement is one, it’s not exactly sanitary to keep a mattress for that long (it’s been through two moves as well), and two, mattress technology have surely improved over the decades. For someone who cares about sleep as much as I do, it was antithetical to still have such a old mattress. I need all the advantages I can get.

Online mattress-in-a-box is all the rage these days. I settled on the Helix brand. Partly due to the influence of the company sponsoring some of the Youtube channels I watch. Those kind of advertising is rather effective, isn’t it? (It’s the coupon code.) Helix also shows up frequently on the list of best mattresses that I’ve researched. What’s particularly intriguing is it has a sleep quiz for people to find out the most suitable model for how they sleep. The side sleeper me ended up with the Helix Midnight Luxe. Of course I paid extra for the Luxe version - this thing will be used for a third of my daily life for the foreseeable future.

By the way, educators get 15% off at Helix. That would be me!

Through the process I learned that California has a law that any place that sells mattresses - be in brick-and-mortar or online - has to pick up the old one for free. I was somewhat worried about what to do with the old one, but then Helix send me an email - after the Midnight Luxe shipped - that there’s a free pickup service. It’s farmed out to a third-party, of course. I’m just happy that’s not something I have to worry about anymore.

I’ve got 100 days to figure out of the Midnight Luxe is worth keeping. It’s still very early to tell. The first few nights my body rejected the new mattress as not belonging to me. As if I’ve traveled somewhere and I’m in a hotel. I kept waking up throughout the night. It has gotten better in subsequent nights, so let’s see how it goes. What I can say is the Helix is supremely comfortable. Memory foam is indeed a wonder material.