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Have You Bought an Organic Queen or King Sized Mattress?

Posted by joy

22 Feb

When you consider how many hours of your adult life you’ll be spending unconscious, an organic mattress is a great investment—especially if you plan on co-sleeping with baby. Have you purchased one? The Naturepedic Organic Cotton Quilted Deluxe pictured below is priced at just under 1200 bucks…which is more than Rebecca and I each spent on our entire first year with our babies.

Since organic mattresses run about three times their conventional counterparts, cost was a limiting factor for my family. In fact, we would still be sleeping on a very low quality full size mattress if our friends wouldn’t have given us their used queen size mattress, which didn’t happen to be organic. If I knew then everything I know now about flameproofing materials in mattress production, I would probably have splurged on the organic waterproof mattress cover by Naturepedic ($139) when I co-slept with my babies.

Would you like to replace your mattress with an organic version? Did you buy an organic crib mattress for baby? Is cost an issue for your family? Would an organic mattress pad quell your worries?

Filed under: Family Life, General, Living Simply, The Green Household

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4 Responses for "Have You Bought an Organic Queen or King Sized Mattress?"

Lauren February 22nd, 2012 at 11:21 am 1
I splurged on a natural latex queen mattress covered in organic wool and cotton, with an organic wool mattress pad. This was before I was pregnant, but it’s worked out great for co-sleeping. My husband just wishes we had gotten a king so we’d have more room. But the queen is incredibly heavy! I dread moving as it is.

The part I’m most excited about is that it is supposed to last 20+ years, and when it’s time to get rid of it, I can just take off the cover and let the sun break it down. I hate getting rid of mattresses and mattress recycling is such a challenge.
Audrey February 25th, 2012 at 5:51 pm 2
We splurged on an Natura Natural Latex mattress before I was pregnant with my son. It worked out great for co-sleeping because it was firm but it’s very uncomfortable. We bought the plushest one available at the time in the king size. It started developing a sink hole on each side. At first it wasn’t deep enough to be considered a warranty issue. We finally slept on it long enough that the sink hole passed the test to be replaced. The replacement has started developing the same issues and we are not large people. I can’t wait to get rid of it but feel like I have to sleep on it since we paid so much for it!

We bought an organic crib mattress for my son and that has been great.

I would buy another organic crib mattress but I would hesitate to purchase another latex mattress…maybe if it was organic but of typical mattress construction.
Lema February 26th, 2012 at 3:46 pm 3
While I definitely understand the cost issues associated with upgrading to a natural mattress, I’m still leaning towards making the switch. After some research, I have found that organic mattresses can actually outlast two to three non-organic mattresses, due to the higher quality of manufacturing. As if the health benefits weren’t enough to have me strongly considering an upgrade, this extra information has definitely made the decision a pretty easy one for me.
Betsy (Eco-novice) February 27th, 2012 at 3:47 pm 4
We do have organic cotton/ latex mattresses — a king for us, a full for our two older kids to sleep in. We saved and waited for a sale. I don’t think organic is as important as natural, and by natural I mean natural materials like cotton, latex, wool, instead of polyurethane foam and other petroleum-based products. I also feel pretty strongly avoiding conventional flame retardant treatments (PBDEs, Tris, Firemaster, etc.). I wrote about our bed in this post:
http://www.eco-novice.com/2011/10/in-search-of-affordable-natural-bed.html

It was definitely hard to fork out the dough, but you do spend so much of your life in bed! And I figure we’ll be using the mattresses for 10+ years. I also felt good about supporting a local business that manufactures the mattresses locally. Although I’ve never bought a crib mattress, I recently wrote about a report about crib mattresses that discusses the pros and cons of the different materials used in crib mattresses. I think the report is worth a read for anyone in the market for a crib mattress:
http://www.eco-novice.com/2012/02/non-toxic-crib-mattresses.html