Used = Gross?

I was sitting here writing when my husband came in to talk about some business regarding the House of Goodwill.  As we were talking he happened to say, “I wish we could buy some new mattresses for the house, but I guess that wouldn’t fit the budget.  Isn’t buying a used mattress a little gross?  Oh, well, I guess we have to.”

Since I had just written the paragraph below, I simply handed him my laptop and told him to read.

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I have a lot of friends who hate the idea of buying anything used.  I think some of them associate buying used with not being able to afford something new and they can’t get over the pride factor.  Some others have told me the idea of buying used stuff is “gross.”  These are the same people who – without a second thought - stay in hotels, sleeping in sheets and toweling off their personal places with towels that have touched hundreds of other people’s most personal places.  I’m fairly certain they also sit on public toilets and swim in public pools full of small children – do we really want to go there?  And I certainly would advise no one to ever look too closely at their forks in the nicest of restaurants – you really don’t want to see what the giant commercial dishwashers miss.  In light of all that, is buying a used table really that gross?

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“Oh,” my husband said.  “Ok.” 

I do have one rule – whatever I buy used I do wipe down with Lysol or run through the dishwasher or washing machine.  Just because.