Dumb lessons learned: if the label says you can't clean it, maybe you shouldn't buy it!

At 24 I headed out to the affordable JC Penney store with my parents to buy my first real bed before I left for DC. My mom had given me a rock-hard, twin size bed as a child and I was never offered any other choice. So when my then-boyfriend-now-husband spent a fortune on his queen-size, overstuffed, super soft, $1500 mattress, I had stars in my eyes (about the boy *and* the mattress.) I *had* to have one.

Instead of realizing that I slept great on a rock-hard bed, I bought myself a smaller version of what the boy had. And then the back problems began. So I exchanged the bed for something slightly firmer, but still soft. Dammit, I was not going to let my mom win this one. She wanted me to have a hard bed. Therefore I wasn't going to get one.

Exchanging a bed is a *pain.* I wasn't going to buy a new bed in spite of sleeping terribly for over a year, so I consoled myself with an ergonomic pillow. A $60 pillow. A pillow that made promises about giving side-sleepers like me the best sleep we've had in ages. A pillow that promised to give me more productive days because of better nights. A pillow that says:

Do not wash.
Do not bleach.
Do not tumble dry.
Do not iron.
Do not dryclean.


Do not clean. 


(Okay, I was just kidding about the last line. The last line really is 'Wipe clean with a damp cloth.') So after I've drooled all over my pillow in the blissful sleep they swear I'll have with this thing, I'm supposed to wipe it clean with a damp cloth? 


Oh, and to add to the stupidity, this turned out to be the most uncomfortable pillow I've ever used in addition to being the most disgusting. 

Hey, at least it squeezed into the trash chute with no problems. Saved me having to call in the local hazmat team to dispose of it.

Now, I've gone back to sleeping on a piece of sheet rock. My husband sleeps on a cloud. We bought a  $2000 sleep number bed and I am *finally* waking up rested for the first time in years (after I stopped crying myself to sleep because of the dent in our wallet). No fancy pillow needed.


And the best part? You can wash *every single* cloth part of a sleep number bed. Every single one. 


Have you ever bought something you discovered you couldn't clean?

The Reckoning

Item: one unwashable ergonomic pillow

Cost: $60

Fate: the trash chute

Total money wasted on junk so far: $1497.00. 

That's almost enough to pay for that sleep number bed. *sob*