Food, sustainablity, and some other stuff
After stuffing the mattress, you need to lace and tuft it. In a mattress, tufting compresses the stuffing to give it a specific feel (for wool, springier and firmer). It also helps hold the stuffing in place. If a wool mattress isn’t tufted, then as you sleep on it, the wool will tend to shift to the edges of the mattress, leaving you in a ditch. And you need to lace before you tuft.
Why did I decide to make a mattress? Well, I started researching and kinda went down the rabbit hole…
I’d had my eye on Holy Lamb Organics wool mattress for a long time. It seems like a great company. They use organic cotton and organic/sustainably sourced wool. But the mattresses only come in 4″ and 5″ thicknesses (seemed a bit thin for my then-tastes) and are fairly expensive ($1300 or $1600 for twin XL, depending on thickness).
So I started doing more research into sustainable and some conventional mattress options.
I found several other (seemingly lesser) brands, and then I came across DIY Natural Bedding. This is a company that supplies the parts for people to assemble their own mattresses and other bedding, like comforters and pillows (!!!!). So cool!! And almost all of the parts are sustainable. For example, all their fabric is organic cotton, grown and milled in the US. The wool is basically organic (not certified, but still sustainable).Their latex is organic. They also do custom work, e.g. for furniture.
The DIY Natural Bedding website is rife with inspiration. I figured if I were going to assemble the mattress myself, I might as well go all the way and make the parts myself too. You know I love crafts!
I decided to make a wool mattress, as opposed to latex, for a few reasons. Wool can be raised domestically; latex comes from rubber trees, which only grow in tropical regions. The latex from DIY Natural Bedding, in particular, is from Sri Lanka, which is far away. Latex mattresses last a long time (30 years!), but wool lasts even longer (100 years!!!!, with some maintenance). If I ever decide to dissemble my mattress, it would be easier to repurpose wool than to repurpose a rectangular chunk of latex foam. I am absolutely certain that wool is biodegradable; I’m not sure about latex.
Lastly, wool mattresses are traditional. I know, I know, not a great reason. But I am solidly part of the modern reskilling movement, and think that it’s important to preserve traditional crafts. How to make a cotton mattress is an old document I heavily relied on for construction ideas.
Here’s a cute story about how long wool mattresses last. Here’s another cute story.
I shower every day, but I don’t use shampoo or conditioner. I “wash” my hair with water alone. This involves wetting my head, then scrubbing my scalp as if I were using shampoo. The scrubbing helps redistribute oils, and remove dirt and dead skin from my hair. I’ve been doing this for about two years. It works best if you have soft water. The minerals in hard water tend to bind to sebum, leaving you with sticky, white, waxy buildup.
Before that, I used baking soda in place of shampoo, which works fine. Before that, I used natural shampoo.
California is having a heat wave today and tomorrow. Around San Jose, it’s supposed to get up to 102°F or so! Whew! It’s time to take extreme evasive maneuvers, which means camping out in air-conditioned buildings!
J and I rarely use the air conditioning (or heat, for that matter). My preference is to leave the windows open at night to bring in the cool air or just tough it out if it’s too warm. If it’s too hot to sleep (usually > 83°F), we turn the AC on for a few hours before going to bed. If it’s too hot during the day even for sitting at a computer, though, I would rather just go somewhere else.
This includes bathing and skin-care, mostly.
It’s been so long since I de-wastified my shower and skincare routines that it’s hard for me to think of suggestions for this. If you have any questions, like what to replace a particular product with, just ask!
A few weekends ago, J, friend A who likes bugs, friend S who is a friend of friend A, friend S’s college friends, and I took a trip to the Purisima Creek Open Space Preserve. We hiked on the Purisima Creek Trail a total distance of 12 miles!! That was much longer than anticipated, but J and I were surprisingly not in bad shape the next day. My calves were a little sore, but that was it. J and I do walk a lot now (at least 2 miles a day, just to the train station and back. If we do any extra activities, like on the weekends, then we easily reach 6+ miles in a day.).
We saw a tooon of banana slugs. They’re famous for being yellow and living in redwood forests. It would seem that they have aposematic coloration, but they’re not toxic. In fact, there’s an (annual?) banana slug recipe contest in Russian River, CA.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of this trip. J brought his fancy camera, though, so I’ll have him upload something soon.
I worked on my wool mattress last Saturday. I was just stuffing it (and worked all day!), but got barely halfway done. I can’t imagine making wool mattresses for a living…
It’s been taking up so much room on the floor. And the wool I’m using is really dirty, so there’s dirt and wool everywhere. The apartment is going to get a thorough cleaning once I’m completely done with the mattress. There’s even wool fluff under the sofa.
Despite all the work, I’m glad I didn’t buy a commercial wool mattress. Mine is almost certainly going to be higher quality than most of those available in the US. And now I know how to make a mattress!
We made green onion pancakes!
My mom sent me a pressure cooker!
