Keep Your Mattress Clean: 4 Best Ways

We spend about a third of our life in bed and just like any other area of our home, should be keeping our bed clean and hygienic. Most people do not realise how gross a mattress actually can be. When we sleep we perspire and shed dead skin cells and all of this gets absorbed by your bedding and mattress. Additionally, we also have the occasional spill which could soak into the mattress and cause stains and foul odours if not cleaned properly.

Below I will give you some general tips to keep your mattress clean and explain how to spring clean your mattress. Ideally, you should clean your mattress every 6 months.

General tips to keep your mattress clean

• Wash your bed linen regularly

Ideally, you should be changing your sheets once a week but with our hectic lifestyles, who actually has time for this? So, try to change your sheets at least every 2 weeks. If you don’t, the microscopic life sharing those sheets with you could actually make you sick. When changing your bedsheets, preferably leave your mattress to air a bit before putting on the fresh sheets.

• Clean accidental spills immediately

Many of us do a lot more than just sleep in our beds. We sit and binge watches our favourite series or catch up on work while enjoying the occasional snack or drink. If you have little ones running around it might at some stage change into their favourite play area. Accidental spills will happen at some stage and it is recommended to clean the spill as soon as it happens. If not, it could be soaked up by your mattress and cause nasty odours in time.

• Use a mattress protector

Benefits of mattress protectors include preventing stains, keeping your mattress more hygienic and reducing allergies. Mattress protectors are waterproof covers that fit over your mattress the same as a fitted sheet and are machine washable. Therefore, accidental spills are cleaned up easier, before soaking into your mattress and the sweat and dead skin cells we shed are not as easily absorbed by your mattress.

• Flip and rotate your mattress

It is important to check the specifications of your mattress with the retailer to determine if the mattress should be flipped or not. Most modern mattresses only need to be rotated. Whether or not you need to flip or rotate your mattress, or both, you need to do this at least once every three months. this ensures that you do not only sleep in one spot all the time and will prolong the lifespan of your mattress and also keep it more hygienic.

How to spring clean your mattress

1.  Vacuum

After removing all your sheets etc you need to vacuum your mattress. This will get rid of some of the dust, dead skin cells, dust mites, hair and other particles.

2.  Clean spots

There are many recommended ways to clean stains off your mattress. So, the cleaning method you use is pretty much up to you. the one method I have used before is to use some baking soda and white vinegar. First, dilute the vinegar with some water and spray it onto the stain. then you need to sprinkle some baking soda over it, let it bubble and if it is a stubborn stain, scrub it a bit with an old toothbrush. Then put a towel over it, let it sit for a while and then vacuum the dry powder of the mattress. The important thing when cleaning the stains would be not to allow the mattress to get too wet, otherwise, you’ll have to wait quite a while for it to dry out again.

3.  Deodorise

After cleaning all the spots and stains and allowing your mattress to dry, you need to deodorise your mattress. To do this, once again, you’ll be using some baking soda – isn’t this stuff just awesome?! Using a sieve, generously sprinkle baking soda over the entire surface of the mattress. Leave it for a minimum of 30min. In this time the baking soda will absorb any moisture left after the spot cleaning and absorb odours. If you like, you can add a few drops of essential oils to the baking soda before sprinkling in on the mattress, to leave you with an even better smell. Once you’ve given the baking soda time to do it thing, vacuum the mattress again.

4.  Air your mattress

After you have vacuumed your mattress, allow it to air out. This will ensure that any moisture left behind in the cleaning process is dried out and will deodorise the mattress even more. You can just open windows in the room or if possible put it outside in the sun. Just make sure that it is in a spot where it will not get dirty again! 🙂