We made three very, very spontaneous camping trips with only one or two days in between. It was a search for cooler weather extravaganza. This included a lot of sand.
So, we are back home for some drier 80s until another heat monster arrives.
This means I needed to rush the sheets and summer blankets into laundry and vacuum up all the sand along the mattresses and do the remake dance before I melted in the next bit of feels like 107.
I thought I would show you a couple things.
- The mattress was an 8” king memory foam (gifted to us). I used my trusty meat cutter electric knife (I bought it for foam cutting). We use twins in winter and the big bed the rest of the year, so I cut it into four pieces (middle is two pieces so we could still get to front lower compartments if we needed to do that bit of yoga.)
- This revealed that the mattress space is larger than a king so I had to glue some foam pieces together and sew them into its own cover. The Corgi sleeps down there and I couldn’t have her sinking sideways down the slot.
- I wrapped each of the three sections (side, middle pieces considered one unit, side) in zippered waterproof mattress covers. I used regular twin size because the sides are a little stretchy). This was to ensure any water that might come in from windows (during a storm, AC drips) wouldn’t soak the foam and as a precaution should a dog be sick or something.
- I use twin XL sheets on all three sections. The middle section has a lot of extra fabric but I just tuck it under. For the cotton comforters I use a queen…sliced lengthways in half to cover the twins. When in full bed mode I use a regular queen comforter because that keeps it neater (less overhang to tuck in sides).



I hope this makes sense. It’s hard to get the right pictures for it all. we put a king size thick flannel sheet over it all if sand, rain, mud or Corgi poop rolling comes into play.

©️zenandtheartoflittlehousetravelling.com2026
All rights reserved.
Please subscribe if you find all of this helpful. The blog has a cost to me and I’m trying to decide if it’s worth all the time I put in just to help others.