Mattress Cleaning 101 for a Fully Clean Bed

As home to millions of dust mites, a mattress is one of the most overlooked places for basic cleaning. If you’re like most people, you regularly clean your sheets, pillowcases, and comforters, but neglect your mattress for most of its lifetime. This is why a used mattress can attract upwards of 10 million dust mites. Avoiding this infestation is as easy as doing routine mattress maintenance using a few proven techniques.

Vacuuming Dirt and Other Debris

Vacuuming is the beginning and end of most people’s mattress cleaning system. They do a quick once-over of their mattress while vacuuming the rest of their bedroom. Don’t get the wrong idea — vacuuming is one of the most important steps in sanitizing a mattress, but it’s only one step. While a vacuum can take care of dirt, hair, dust, dead skin, and other types of debris, it can’t go deep into the mattress to remove everything else that has soaked into the fabric over the years. This is when baking soda enters the game.

Baking Soda for Deep Cleaning

After vacuuming the mattress, give it a nice scrub with baking soda. Not only will baking soda get under the surface of the mattress, soaking up years’ old grime, it will eliminate odors. Therefore, baking soda should be generously sprinkled on a mattress and then scrubbed into the fabric. This can be done after spot cleaning with a mixture of water and either detergent, vinegar, or hydrogen peroxide (water helps activate baking soda’s cleaning power). As for the brush, you can use a regular hairbrush or a cleaning device that’s more high-tech like one that utilizes microfiber for a thorough yet delicate cleaning. Gentle is key when it comes to applying baking soda.

Make Sure to Flip It

​After gently brushing the baking soda into the mattress, let it sit for half an hour before vacuuming up the residue. Also, if you spot-cleaned beforehand, it may be in your best interest to let the mattress dry out to remove excess moisture. Lastly, flip the mattress (if it’s flippable) and do all of this to the other side. A mattress’s one clean side will soon be reinfested by the other.

Although people spend a third of their lives on mattresses, they tend to clean their mattresses far less than they do lesser-used items. This is how millions of dust mites accumulate inside a used mattress. Vacuuming, spot cleaning, and applying baking soda to both sides of the mattress will keep it fresh and its human occupant(s) healthy.  Some mattresses have copper-ion infused fabric which can help kill bacteria and microbes, but a good cleaning will help remove those pests that couldn’t thrive in a copper environment.