*This post is not sponsored by Zinus, but I’m giving their Back to School Scholarship Contest a go.*

I haven’t been able to stop talking about how much I love living in my own apartment off campus. Some of my friends had temporary stints over the summer (as did I), so we’ve been swapping lifehacks. For example, some of my friends would go for super comfy but also super expensive mattresses they’d never buy but would only need for the summer that a free trial could cover.

But I need my mattress for longer than that, so as clever as that scheme was, it wouldn’t work in my case. Luckily, I didn’t have to look around for long. One of my friends spent his summer on his friend’s Zinus mattress, and he said it was fantastic, so he recommended it to me when he knew I was looking for one.

I browsed their website (sort by price: low to high, ofc) and found that their cheapest mattress is a 5-inch twin memory foam mattress (in khaki, blue, or pink, but who cares, you’ll have sheets covering it) for $95, and the next cheapest mattress you can get is a 6-inch twin memory foam mattress (and it’s in a normal white colour) for only $5 more.

I don’t know anything about how much one should spend on a mattress, but just for comparison, Ikea’s cheapest mattress (pictured above, which is the one that I had been using temporarily until I got my Zinus mattress) is $89, and it’s 4-inches, not memory foam. Um, so heck yeah I’d get a Zinus mattress instead!

When I got my temporary mattress at Ikea, my mother was deeply troubled, because she thinks it’s very important to invest in a good mattress, and she’s right. A mattress is where you spend a third of your life. Having good sleep affects your performance and the rest of your day. As a college student, I need all the good sleep I can get. #BetterSleepBetterGrades 😉

Nevertheless, I bought the rando Ikea mattress because an average mattress is better than no mattress, and my daybed requires two thin twin mattresses anyway (you can pull out the daybed and expand the sleeping space to double what it was), so I figured that I could just get one for now and give myself more time to find a high quality mattress to invest in.

But now that my Zinus mattress has arrived, I can pull off my rando mattress and start off with a clean slat! 😉

I ended up getting the 10-inch twin memory foam green tea mattress. I wanted the 8-inch version to save a little money, but it was out of stock! I guess that just means I have to live in luxury. What a sacrifice to make.

I wanted to keep the bag the mattress was in intact so that I might be able to store my rando temp mattress in it, but the mattress was so compressed and the bag had so much tension that I ended up having to cut it open, which is what I think you’re supposed to do anyway.

Ta-da! My brand new Zinus mattress in the process of inflating(?). (Scroll back up to see how low my rando temp mattress laid in comparison.)

I was so relieved that my sheets still fit around this mattress.

AHHH! I’M SO EXCITED!

Glorious.

The mattress was a little wide though, which was weird because my daybed-frame is supposedly a standard twin size, and my mattress is also supposedly a standard twin size. Maybe I didn’t tuck my sheets and duvet in enough. Luckily my bed pulls out so it’s not a big deal, and I don’t even need to pull it out that much.

Loading my daybed up with stuffies! I need to go to interior decorating school and figure out how to lay out pillows. Apparently it’s not as easy as just throwing them on. I want my daybed to look more like a plush sofa. I’ll have to work on that over Fall Break.

Snuggle buddy <3

Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet? -L.M. Montgomery

Earlier this week, I mentioned an unease in my heart, but this mattress has definitely helped soothe and elevate it, which sounds kinda overdramatic, but it really did all that for me. Sometimes I just need to get away from the big bad world (or just get away from anything related to computer science oh god), come back to my own little safe haven, and sink into bed with a warm cuppa tea and a hug-ful of soft friends.

A good night’s rest can be especially underestimated by college students. For us, nothing matters more than getting that assignment in on time, and once that one is in, there’s always another one waiting. Who has time for sleep??

A good night’s rest has become a luxury rather than a necessity, and we congratulate each other when we get more than six hours of it. A full night’s rest? What a foreign concept!

I think I’m going crazy. Very soon I’ll have completed my full transformation into a zombie. A zombie that can’t pay attention in class, that can hardly pay attention to friends, who just floats through life (un-life…?) with nothing that excites and with nothing to look forward to. There are only so many personal growth books you can read, only so many motivational quotes you can tell yourself. Sometimes you need a little boost, and this 10-inch mattress did that for me. I just really like soft and cosy things okay??

Want to check out Zinus for yourself? In addition to mattresses, they also have beds, bases, frames, pillows, and toppers.

Use my coupon to get 10% off your first purchase!
(I receive a gel memory foam pillow set for every referral. Help me achieve my dream of creating the plushest daybed ever lolol)

PS: moving into my new apartment, building my ikea daybed, a month of conscious mornings