Reduce, Reuse, Recycle–or NOT

So let me tell you about a little about this boat.  It is 15 years old, and overall has been well cared for, well maintained, well loved.  But it came with the ORIGINAL mattresses.  Yep, 15 year old mattresses.  15 years of water, sweat, mildew, body excrement, well….you get the idea.  So I had decided from the day of inspection when I first laid eyes on them that the very first thing I was going to do when we set foot on the boat was replace the mattresses. As soon as we closed on the boat  I went to the original mattress factory and had custom sized mattresses made (the aft mattresses are queen that have to be cut in half….long story). I bought new mattress covers, new sheets, new mattress toppers.  The kids picked out their comforters to decorate their rooms.  We loaded all these mattresses and accoutrements into a u-haul for our first trip to the boat over New Years Eve and off we went to Georgia.  We arrived and started immediately taking off the old mattresses (I was wishing I had my Ebola Hazmat suit).  We had to hurry to clean the bunks and place the new mattresses so that we would have beds to sleep in by nightfall.  I had already scoped out a nearby dumpster for the old mattresses.  The kids were dragging the old mattresses towards the dumpster when Kim threw on the brakes,

“STOP!  Someone might want that!”

“What?  You mean these old mattresses?”

“Yes, someone might want those old mattresses.  They still have some cushion in them.”

Yep.  That is my Kim.  She can’t stand to throw anything away.  The only way to get rid of anything in our house is to find someone else to take it.  So instead of tossing these threadbare, stained, musty, old mattresses we loaded them all up in the u-haul and started trying to find a home for them.  First we took them to a local thrift store.  There is a very nice lady there who runs it, she had taken other donations from us already, but she took one look in that truck and said no way.  She sent us to the Salvation Army homeless shelter.  I sat in the car, too embarrassed to make eye contact with the director, while Kim barked her wares, demonstrating the 4 inches of foam cushion that still remained in the mattresses. The man who ran the homeless shelter also refused to take the mattresses.  I guess he figured people would rather sleep on the concrete bench than on those mattresses. He gave us directions to the dump. We had to pay $34 for the privilege of being able to throw them into a big trash pile.

Hazmat Suit

And as we drove away Kim just kept exclaiming,

“I can’t believe no one wanted those mattresses”