Bed

[LWinters]

We just bought a 25' international. the bed is a pain to make...Has anyone replaced the mattress with a narrower one (55" wide which is the width of the board that supports the mattress). This would make the mattress 5" narrower than a queen. That would give enough room for me to fit next to the bed to make it and we would also have room for the blankets to tuck nicely by the closet. any thoughts or suggestions?

[dkottum]

We have the same bed arrangement. It's a difficult bed to make up in the conventional manner. Thinking outside the box is useful here. The original bedspread helps keep everything in place during the night with its wrap-around ends. She pulls up the sheets/covers while still in bed, then gets out and pulls things tighter and orderly. Just takes a minute or two.

The width of the queen bed leaves more space on the sides than we ever use. We came close to buying a full mattress as you suggested this year, but got a screamin' good deal on a Sleep Number queen mattress with radius corners at the foot side. Perfect fit on the standard platform (are you sure it's not 60"?) and wonderful comfort, can select our own firmness level.

But if you don't need the queen bed width, why not put a full mattress on there. That's where we were headed. We considered a twin bed conversion but don't like sleeping alone.

[Foiled Again]

I sawed off slightly less than 2 inches from the plywood on the side of the bed facing the front wall and left the queen mattress alone. If you sleep that close to the edge your head will bump the nightstand so why not. By removing the plywood I can just get around to that side of the bed to tuck the bottom bedsheet, etc. into the top of the bed. Using dental floss (because it is stronger than most thread) I also hand sewed a loop of nylon webbing to the top end and to the top sides of the mattress so I can easily wrestle the mattress around and lift it up to get the fitted sheets fitted! SORE fingers doing it, but worth it! Last trick: I like a tight bottom sheet so I shortened a standard queen fitted sheet to fit the six inch shorter RV queen.

When I make the bed I don't tuck in the top sheet, etc. as I'm a bit of a restless sleeper - however I safety pin thru the top sheet, blanket and spread on the hidden side in 3 or places, and on the bottom near the front corner. Acts kinda like a duvet - so a couple of quick tugs and it looks decent. It HAS occurred to me that I could snap the bedspread to the bed frame on the front side to create a nicer fold over for the pillow but I'm not quite that fussy.

Paula

[lsbrodsky]

We also have the Sleep Number mattress, which we love. I am the one who needs to start the bed making process because I find the easiest way to get the mattress cover and the bottom sheet on is to lift up a corner of the mattress, put my foot on the plywood, and rest the mattress on my knee/thigh. I then put the fitted sheet on the corner and drop the mattress. same for all four corners. We got our sheets from Airstream and they are a perfect fit. My wife gets to deal with the top sheet, blankets, and bed cover but she does not seem to have too much difficulty.
Larry