Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture
  3. How tos

Why You Should Clean Your Mattress and 9 Simple Steps to Complete the Task

By
A clean and freshly made bed in a bedroom
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Your mattress endures a lot every night. As a result, your mattress can get quite dirty. What on earth can you do to prevent your mattress from becoming so soiled that it may not last long?

Even if you go to bed squeaky clean, you can still make your mattress filthy by simply sleeping on it every night. Here are some tips to clean your mattress and extend its life.

Recommended Videos

Difficulty

Moderate

Duration

3 hours

What You Need

  • Vacuum

  • Cleaning cloths

  • Baking soda

  • Cleaning solution

  • Water

  • Hydrogen peroxide

  • Vinegar

Someone places a white fitted sheet onto a mattress
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Why Is It Important to Clean Your Mattress?

We know that mattresses tend to last 7 to 10 years after purchase, yet we also know we can extend our mattresses’ lives by maintaining them well. We can rotate mattresses, and in some cases, we can flip them. But if we don’t address what may be seeping into our mattresses, changing their position will only help so much.

It may seem like a pain in the you-know-what at times, but it’s critical to keep that mattress clean. As is the case with pillows, a mattress can collect bodily fluids and skin, dirt, fungi, mold, mildew, mites, and mites’ fecal matter over the years.

Not only is that simply a huge hygienic problem, but it can also potentially trigger serious allergic reactions, and all those substances can whittle away at the inside fibers that make the mattress comfortable. If a dirty mattress ultimately becomes an uncomfortable and unusable mattress, what can we do to keep a clean bed?

A Shifman coil spring mattress set
Image used with permission by copyright holder

How to Clean a Mattress

If you really want to deep clean your mattress, you need cleaning cloths, baking soda, a gentle dish soap or cleaning solution, cold water, and a vacuum with an upholstery attachment.

For light stains, you can make your own cleaning solution with dish soap and water. If you need something stronger, you can try equal parts water and hydrogen peroxide, or equal parts water and white vinegar. Hydrogen peroxide and vinegar both work as effective disinfectants, but keep in mind that hydrogen peroxide may act as a bleach on colored fabrics.

Step 1: Grab your cleaning cloths, baking soda, cold water, and vacuum (with the upholstery attachment).

Step 2: Prepare your preferred cleaning solution. (See above for more details.)

Step 3: For a proper full clean, remove all bedding, such as pillows, bedsheets, and any mattress pad or mattress protector you’re using.

Step 4: Check the care instructions on the mattress label to ensure you won’t do anything that could cause damage.

Step 5: While you have your pillows out of the way and your sheets in the washing machine, grab the vacuum. Connect the upholstery attachment to the vacuum and vacuum both sides of the mattress to remove dust and dirt.

Step 6: If you need to spot clean stains, use a clean cloth and your preferred cleaning solution and gently dab (rather than rub or scrub) the areas to remove the stains.

Step 7: To neutralize any strong odors, sprinkle a thin layer of baking soda across the mattress’s surface. Let it sit for at least 2 hours.

Step 8: Vacuum the mattress again to remove the baking soda and any remaining loose particles.

Step 9: Once you finish cleaning the mattress, pillows, and bedsheets, remake your bed by placing everything back on the mattress.

A bed in a hotel room
Image used with permission by copyright holder

How Else Can You Keep Your Mattress Clean?

If you’re not yet familiar with the mattress protector, here goes: It’s a thin layer of waterproof and generally impermeable fabric designed to protect against spills and stains. For additional protection, a mattress encasement wraps all the way around the mattress to protect against spills, stains, bedbugs, and additional invasive elements.

If you’re worried about what might reach your mattress, consider investing in a mattress protector or mattress encasement to help keep a clean mattress.

You can also keep your mattress in good shape by caring for the rest of your bed. Wash your sheets regularly and make sure they’re fully dry before making your bed in order to prevent potential mold growth.

To keep your mattress clean and go to bed every night with the thought that you’re sleeping on a clean bed, follow these steps for how to clean a mattress and you’re sure to get a good night’s sleep each evening. Another suggestion is that if you’ve had the same mattress for a decade or longer, then it’s time to start shopping for a new one.

Andrew Davey
Andrew Davey
Former Contributor
Andrew Davey is a writer who has spent a long time in “hard news” journalism, but who has also pursued interests in food and… Read Full Bio
Topics
Culture
The Manual Library: 10 action franchises to pass the cold weekends
Cross

Guys need to read more. Every time I start doomscrolling on TikTok or Instagram, the BookTok world is almost exclusively curated for women. That is why we need to start pushing our love for the bang-bang shoot-’em-ups. The debonair spy. The man on his own, cut off from all help, with only his skills and his wits to help him overcome the obstacles between him and his mission. As men, we love these escapes from the mundane lives and diving into the hero fantasy we all have. When women talk about the mental load they carry every day, men are usually creating our own mental load with safety and security: “What would I do if someone attacked from here? Or there?” Really, what we’re asking is, “What would Jason Bourne do?”

I tend to live in this place in my head when I need to escape from the world, but it is more fun to read about it. As the weather begins to turn and our evenings and weekends are colder and darker, we need something to occupy our time to get us from now until we can escape to the great outdoors in the spring. Here are some action and adventure book recommendations to get your heart going and quench that hero fantasy without doing anything dangerous.

Read more
Culture
5 lessons the military teaches you that you don’t learn in school
Saving Private Ryan

This is not a knock on public school. I went to public school. I liked public school. There is a system of life training built into the social fabric of school where we learn a lot about ourselves and the lives we are about to live. But the truth is we don’t learn a lot about life from the actual curriculum in the classroom. We learn that Paul Revere rode through the streets to alarm everyone that the British were coming. We learned that A squared plus B squared equals C squared. We even learned what an electron is. But there are precious little practical life lessons you can take with you. For me, I picked a lot of those through movies (a lot of parents are shaking their heads right now, but don’t knock it completely; there is a lot you can learn from movie perspectives) and my time in the United States Army.

The military teaches you a ton of practical life skills that will elevate your life when applied to your day-to-day. Here are five of them with a couple bonuses at the end.

Read more
Culture
Coffee is for closers: How Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross’s iconic scene teaches you more than sales
Alec Baldwin

There are moments in movies that stand the test of time. They are the first thing we think of when someone uses a turn of phrase or references something that sends your brain down the rabbit hole of movie quotes. These become cultural stalwarts and embed themselves into the very collective consciousness of our society. Some become known for certain industries. Wanna know what law enforcement is like? Check out Training Day or End of Watch. Wanna know what being a firefighter is like? Press play on Backdraft. How about military life? Full Metal Jacket, Jarhead, or Officer and a Gentleman. Want realism? Don’t watch any of them. But what about sales? There are a dozen movies that can teach you how to sell. Boiler Room. The Wolf of Wall Street. But none of them are as iconic as Glengarry Glen Ross. In fact, one scene in that movie every salesman should watch. Blake’s 8-minute tongue-lashing at the office underachievers.

Alec Baldwin took less than ten minutes to cement himself in the lexicon of sales mentors. Walking into the office, he looks at Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, and Alan Alda and rips them to shreds when one pours himself some coffee.

Read more