There’s a ~52″x75″ item needed to make our guest room functional… A mattress:

We’ve never been mattress shopping before, and with all the varieties available and stereotypes for mattress salespeople in mind, we started by, you guessed it, researching. Then we decided to start our search at Macy’s Center City; if we had to escape we could run across the aisle to the kitchen department and hide. Fortunately that wasn’t necessary.

The salesman there was friendly, helpful, and by no means pushy. We tried out a few mattresses, narrowed it down, got pricing, delivery fees, and warranty info without any hassle. Whew. Can’t say I understood all the blah blah blah jargon though. Here’s one with titanium:

We also checked out the South Philly Ikea, who has a 25 yr warranty, lower delivery fees (with pickup as an option), but a more chaotic free-for-all showroom. The salespeople didn’t even glance our way until we approached them.

Having some fixed criteria was helpful in our case (max height, spring vs latex, plush vs firm, etc). Since we’re using an antique frame & a guest room budget, we knew what we wanted (12″ high max, spring, firm, no boxspring) but still had plenty of options and the whole experience went pretty smoothly.

We narrowed it down to one super comfy model at each store that were practically identical. Final decision soon to come!