Tips on Storing Mattresses
Mattresses in the grand scheme of things are one of the most important household items when it comes to sheer familiarity, we spend a great deal of time on them and we all know whether we prefer a “soft” or “hard” mattress. It can make the difference between a night’s sleep and really good night’s sleep, and get it slightly wrong and you might find yourself opting for the sofa than another morning waking up with strange back pains.
Whilst being fairly large and unwieldy items, mattresses do need a lot of care in storage due to their construction and material. Thinking about it, when your mattress comes out of storage and is put back to work on your bed again, two considerable problems that you want to avoid are mould and dust. Neither is good for your health, and being exposed to it for several hours day is obviously not a shining prospect. You will need to take whatever measures you can to reduce humidity in your storage unit (we published advice about this some time ago), but the optimum position would be, wait for it, climate controlled storage, where you are paying for ideal atmospheric conditions that are literally on tap.
Mattresses however can attract dust like crazy, and not just on the surface either, deep down inside too, so you will need to do a bit more than put it in a well maintained storage unit near you. Preparing the mattress for this is the fun part, and you may need up to three people to get an effective system going. You will need a big roll of shrink wrap – carefully ensure the entire mattress is completely covered in the plastic, which will protect well against dust. Alternatively, there are special bags you can buy for sealing and storing mattresses, although I dare say shrink wrap is likely to be more prevalent.
When it comes to putting the mattress into storage, you are going to face a bit of a dilemna. Mattresses, whilst occupying quite a lot of space, can be made to fit perfectly on their side between objects. This however isn’t the position that mattresses were built for. Remember that they also contain springs and if a spring breaks or goes a bit dodgy in your mattress, you will certainly know about it when you lie on it. The best way of keeping a mattress is horizontally, just like on a bed, so for long term storage prospects you might want to have a bit of a think about how this can be accomplished your storage arrangements. However, short term you may be able to get away with the mattress being put on its side, although that is slightly riskier. The main objective then is to ensure the mattress is put in a position where it is obviously not going to get warped, and that is very much a problem that needs to be solved when transporting the mattress from the storage unit to and from home too.
Posted in: Tips & Ideas