We decided to put it off because we had a lot of expenses at the time (buying a house comes with expenses? you don't say!), but I still managed to come out worse in the deal because I ended up with John's old mattress on my side of the bed.(1) He's much larger than I am, so you can imagine whose mattress had more wear.
We replaced Hannah's mattress first when we found the cushy, snuggly kind she likes on sale. As far as I am concerned, though, cushy mattresses are a type of torture device. John and I wanted firm mattresses, and we knew we'd have to spend some real money on them, so we put off our shopping a little longer.
Then our city's twice annual large trash pickup rolled around, and we realized that this was our big chance to get rid of our old, saggy mattresses, but that we would also have to suck it up and buy some new ones. To the Internet! (2) We did a little research on (German) consumer reports and managed to find what we were looking for, with free delivery even.
Once again, I (and Hannah) got the short end of the stick when the large trash day came, because John was enjoying himself in Croatia at a conference while Hannah and I schlepped mattresses down this hill to the pickup point near that church tower.
Then I got to sleep on our couch for a week (joined by John at the end of that time) until the mattresses were delivered. That was actually not such a big deal, because it is quite firm, which I like.
Now when I get in bed at night, the mattress doesn't sink down, not even a centimeter. It is great!
(1) Here in Germany, double beds have two single mattresses side by side instead of one large, square mattress like in the US (and France, it turns out).
(2) We're so far out, there aren't any decent furniture stores in the area, and we were going to have to have the mattresses delivered anyway, so this seemed like as good a method of mattress shopping as any.
