So on the way home after work, I pass by a house where the owners have dragged an old mattress and box spring set out to the curb.First thing that went thru my mind.... oh yeah, good luck getting the garbageman to throw that in the back of his truck. Second thing that went thru my mind.... yuck! Making the situation even worse, not only was it a disgusting old mattress, but it had been raining all day. I can only imagine that a Serta filled with dirt-a (and who know what else) smells worse than any old wet dog I've ever had an encounter with.
Trash haulers have to really hate dealing with old mattresses. I'm sure they try to act all cool and brave, but I bet down deep inside they're wishing they could put on rubber gloves and decontamination suits. After all, the stuff that happens on a mattress... GROSS! Heck, it even gives me a little bit of the heebie-jeebies to move mattress sets owned by friends who are moving.
I found out on the web.... "the lifespan of a mattress depends on many factors, including how much you use it and how often you change the position of the mattress." I'll bet way less than 50% of mattresses get "rotated" on a regular basis (one online site advocates you should flip your mattress every time sheets are changed). We flip ours about once every 6 months, although this comment from an online site makes me ("Mr. Cheepy") consider doing it more often: "a mattress that is flipped often could last from five to seven years longer than one that is rarely flipped." So if tires get rotated every 5,000 miles, a mattress needs rotated every 5,000 what? Winks?
Back to the mattress on the curb.... where exactly do old mattresses go to die? I presume they end up in a landfill taking up precious space alongside so many other consumables. But when I think about how many beds there are and how many mattresses would get trashed every month across the U.S., that's a whole lot of landfill space!!
Maybe they get torched..... so the landfill guys can giggle as they watch the bedbugs scatter. ;)
MH
num 6:24-26