I needed a new Mattress.

The only good thing about my old mattress (and it was literally from the Reagan administration era so I do mean OLD), was that it was SO OLD I figured the toxic chemicals had probably worn off.

Can you tell I’d been putting this off for a while?

I wasn’t about to go to one of those mattress showrooms and be sold an incredibly overpriced, soaked-in-flame-resistant-chemicals, new mattress.

I was also wary of the strange new wave of foam mattresses that promised to revolutionize my entire life. And if the odor emanating from the memory foam mattress toppers I’d smelled was any indication of what a whole mattress made of that foam would smell like, I didn’t want to put that in my bedroom, either, where I would spend 1/3 of my life breathing in the outgassed fumes 0 inches from my face.

Could I make my own mattress? Out of real stuff?

I didn’t think so, but I put it into a search engine anyway. You never know until you google, right?

Well, whatdyaknow? It’s a thing: Diy Natural Bedding Company

You can buy latex foam slabs and a cover for them and put the slabs in the cover, zip it up, and voila! mattress!

If you really want to go DIY, you can buy the cover fabric and pattern and sew it yourself.

There are more options, too, for the filling, like kapok, wool, and shredded latex, but it can be as simple as latex slabs and covers that are shipped to you and you assemble yourself.

I’ve been sleeping on my organic latex mattress in a cotton cover (they call it ticking), for over a year now and I love it so much. No odor, no weirdness, just peace-of-mind and complete comfort.

It’s so quiet, so gentle. I never feel any disturbance when my husband turns over, and it’s only a queen-size.

Our bunny Chelsea and I made an unboxing video of my setting it up if you want to see how it works, here.

Deborah Brenton of Diy Natural Bedding is uncommonly helpful in helping you personalize your mattress exactly to your own needs. If you’re in need of a new mattress, for yourself or your children, I strongly recommend DIY Natural Bedding. I would never buy from anyone else.

Because all this is a bit much to absorb in one post, tomorrow I’m going to share with you an in-depth interview with Deborah Brenton which represents my attempt to get clarity on ALL things mattress.

If you’re like me and looking for the perfect mattress solution, hopefully it will help bring you clarity, too.