I’m a former Walmart worker – there’s one item shoppers should not buy and it all comes down to quality
A FORMER Walmart worker has revealed the one item shoppers should avoid buying from the retailer.
Rousseau Vestal, a former Walmart cashier, told BestLife that Walmart bed sheets should be avoided because of their quality.
“You won’t want to get anything less than the greatest bed linens given that you spend anywhere between six and eight hours a night in your bed,” Vestal said.
“Although Walmart’s prices are tempting, the price for the quality is not excellent.”
After Vestal stopped working at Walmart, she founded Find The Aisle, a website that helps shoppers locate specific items in major grocery stores, including Walmart.
As such, she also noted you can head to the clearance section to find pillows you need at other stores for a good price.
Jen Stark, the founder of the gardening and the home improvement blog Happy DIY Home, concurred that Walmart sheets aren’t something to invest in because they don’t last as long as they should.
“Ideally, a set of sheets should be able to last for over a year or two, even if you use them every night and wash them two or three times a month,” she said.
“Walmart’s sheets tend to wear out and fray with normal use, and this sends you back to buy another set far sooner than you would like.”
She added the sheets also do not have proper thread counts which should be between 300 and 500, according to Stark.
“A lot of Walmart’s budget-friendly sheet sets (under $30) are missing the thread count, and this means they’re usually below 300,” she said.
Walmart currently sells a range of bed sheets from under $10 up to nearly $80 for 600 thread count.
Kelly Johnson-Arbor, a medical toxicologist, and co-medical director of the National Capital Poison Center explained mattresses should not be purchased at Walmart.
Mattresses and bedding are the most common items that cause deaths from fires in homes, Arbor said.
Most read in The Sun
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has fire safety standards to reduce the spread of mattress fires.
“Some foam mattresses (including at least one that I found for sale on Walmart’s website) contain fiberglass as a fire retardant to meet [these] federal standards,” Arbor said.
“These chemicals can irritate your skin, eyes, and lungs and “cause skin rashes, lung disease (after long-term exposure) and even eye scarring if the fibers enter the eye.”
Most people come into contact with fiber when handling mattress covers, because mattress foam itself is typically free of these chemicals, BestLife notes.
If you must purchase a Walmart mattress, Arbor said you must read the labels.
“The mattress label, which lists the components of the mattress, may or may not contain the terms ‘fiberglass,’ ‘glass fiber’ or ‘glass wool’ if fiberglass is present within the mattress or its cover,” Arbor said.