Your mattress is an incredibly important part of your sleep: a good mattress helps support your back, cushion your joints, and can drastically affect your overall sleep quality. If you find yourself feeling tired and achy throughout the day despite a constant flow of java, it could be a sign you need to replace your mattress.
Mattresses are designed for an average use of 7-8 years; after this, the quality of the mattress starts to deteriorate—and so does your sleep. The springs can become broken or rusted, meaning there’s less support for your body. You can easily tell that there’s something wrong if your mattress groans or creaks as you move around, or if you can see a noticeable dip in the centre of the bed. Plus, your partner could be suffering too: older mattresses are less effective at blocking sounds and movement from each end of the mattress.
Over time, your mattress will also start to accumulate dust mites, allergens, and bacteria. While a mattress protector can help slow this down, your mattress will inevitably become less and less hygienic over the years. Unfortunately, there’s no real way to clean a mattress. You can vacuum it regularly to help get rid of surface dirt and dust and light stains with a stain-removing spray, but mattresses can’t be deep-cleaned. You might start to notice your allergies worsening over time, and this can be caused by an older mattress.
Luckily, washing your bed linen regularly can help you extend the life of your mattress. Sheets and covers accumulate tons of dirt and dead skin cells every single day even if you consider yourself pretty clean. Sweat, body oils, body fluids, and even dirty feet can wreak havoc on your skin and could cause an infection if you have a wound. Studies show that most people wait as many as four weeks between bed linen washes, which is way too long. You should aim to wash sheets, pillows, and duvet covers every single week. Comforters should be washed every 3-4 weeks, and duvets should be dry cleaned 1-2 times per year. This might sound overwhelming—with kids, a job, and other household cleaning to do, who has time for that much laundry! You can make the chore exponentially easier by having multiple sets of bed linens; if you have three sets per bed, you can quickly change your bed sheets while one set is in the laundry and the other is folded in the closet. That way, you can wash the bed linen over the week at your leisure (meaning with a glass of wine and binge watching Scandal).
Your bedroom is where you’ll spend a third of your life, so why not make it comfortable? A new mattress will revolutionize your sleep, and you’ll kick yourself for putting it off for so long. Having fresh, quality bed linens will also help you doze off peacefully—no sheep counting required!
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