Escalating Bed Wars

2012-01-24 – Escalating Bed Wars

The market provides many options for people who need to protect their mattress for hygiene purposes.  You can get a plastic undersheet, a plastic bed condom or even a plasticized mattress.

These products are no match for my son’s ability to destroy and love of chewing plastic.

Plastic undersheet: ripped off in less than fifteen minutes.

Plastic bed condom: the first one actually lasted several months until he managed to get a tiny hole in it and rip it to shreds.  The second one, less than fifteen minutes.

Plasticized mattress: had to special order this one from a medical supply company, guaranteed heavy duty plastic, no leaks.  Lasted thirty minutes before a seam parted and he could start prying it apart.

Can you sense the annoyance?

That’s when I decided to get creative.  And cheaper.

Plastic tarp and duct tape.  I wrapped the mattress in a plastic tarp and duct taped every edge down.  It lasted a year.  Every time he got a little hole in it, I sealed it up with more duct tape.  I thought I had a solution but eventually he figured it out  Then it got ripped apart.

I rewrapped it.  Two days later, destroyed again.  Clearly, this technique wasn’t working.

Latest effort: plastic tarp with even more duct tape.  I only left tiny grids smaller than the size of his hand open, figuring he wouldn’t be able to tear long strips of it away.

For six months, I was right.

I will give him some credit.  He took the tiny shreds of plastic and put them all in his garbage.  We do have some progress.

So now we upgrade.  Plastic tarp completely wrapped in duct tape.  On examination, he didn’t rip the duct tape, he ripped the plastic underneath it.  So we seal the plastic away from him.

Will it work?  We’ll see.