Mattress coils

When we exchanged Phoebe and Zoë's old bunk bed for Benjamin's new loft bed, we were left with a couple of old mattresses on our hands (because Benjamin's new bed frame is a full not a twin). They were rather inexpensive mattresses in the first place, so were never very comfortable, but various children have used them for...at least 13 years...so they'd...been through some...stuff. 

I won't list all the bodily fluids they encountered. And, I mean, we used mattress covers...but they got gross anyway. 

I don't really blame anyone for not wanting them. 

But—goodness sakes!—do you know how much it costs to dispose of a mattress?

Luckily, I know a guy!

Actually, I don't really know him, but our neighbour up the street knows him and scrawled his phone number down for me on one of those blue shop towels while he was fixing his car after he spotted me out on a walk with my kids. He was wondering what I was planning to do with the broken down bicylce he spotted sitting beside our garbage can. I was like, "I honestly don't know!"

The city doesn't like to do bulky items. 

So this neighbour hands me this corner of a shop towel and is like, "Text this guy—tell him Paul sent you."

This number—it's magic! 

I text it and say, "Hey! I got a free bike from the Buy Nothing Group but, as it turns out, it's too junky for me to even attempt to fix...do you want it?" And he will say, "Yes!"

Next thing I know—the bike is gone.

And if a tree falls on my trampoline in the backyard (and I get a new(er) trampoline from the Buy Nothing Group to replace it), I can text the guy and say, "How about a smashed trampoline frame?" 

And he'll text back and say, "Do you want me to take the springs, too?"

And I'll be like, "Absolutely!"

So after watching some YouTube videos on how to disassemble and recycle old mattresses, I texted this guy and was like, "Sooooo...mattress coils?"

And he was like, "If you strip the mattress down, yes, I will take the coils."

I'm pretty sure he sells junk to the scrap metal place down the road, which I could probably do myself—there's a place down the road that takes it—but I don't have the inclination to collect enough to bother trying to sell it.

Anyway, that's how Benjamin and I found ourselves ripping apart a mattress this evening:

We've finished with one. Now we just have to do the other one and we'll be good to go. 

Here's Benjamin pretending to sleep on the bare mattress coils:

We're going to use some of the mattress padding to wrap the bars of his loft bed ladder. Those tiny metal rungs are...the worst.

When Rachel had a loft bed (which we got rid of when we moved here because it was too tall to fit in the basement), we put pool noodles on the ladder so she could climb up without hurting her feet. The person who had this loft bed before had tried a similar thing and had taped some foam padding to the rungs. But we both had the same issue: after so much repetitive pressure, the foam split and became somewhat useless. 

So I was wondering what might be a more durable solution—specifically using supplies we already have in the house. I mean, honestly the first place a solution should be considered is perhaps in the design of the ladders (the design is awful...and seemingly universal because this is our second loft bed and second terrible ladder and if you Google how to fix that it seems like everybody and their dog has the same problem). But evidently the bed designers are happy with their painful ladders, so I was thinking of more durable solutions...using materials we already have in our house.

We cut this mattress apart and that black mat stuff (we spent like an hour and a half pulling off the mattress) seems like it might be our solution. It's so tough to cut through it (we spent all our time carefully unbending staples to remove it) that we figure it won't split like pieces of cheap foam. 

I guess we'll find out!