One Spring Cleaning Chore that often goes overlooked is cleaning your mattress. Since that mattress is where you spend about a third of your life, it makes sense to give it a good cleaning periodically. Especially, if you suffer from allergies or asthma. Regular cleaning of sheets and linens is the first line of defense, but periodically, your mattress will need an especially thorough round of cleaning and maintenance. Spring cleaning for your mattress is a good idea and can help you breathe easier at night! Here’s how to use Nok-Out and /or SNiPER to do a good job of cleaning it, and help you sleep easier.
A Breeding Ground
Your mattress is likely to come in contact with sweat, blood and other body fluids, and because you are lying in it, it is a warm moist place. That warm moist place is inhabited by bacteria, living and dead dust mites, the feces of those mites (which can cause allergic reactions), dead skin cells, fleas from pets and their feces, and so on. There is a regular ecology of critters living in your bed. Being warm and moist, with all those ‘food’ sources, it is indeed a breeding ground. A good Spring Cleaning of your mattress will reduce that population of critters to a healthier level.
What to do?
Daily: Leave the covers pulled back and allow the sheets to air out and dry. Run the AC in summer to keep indoor humidity levels low.
Weekly
Check the washing instruction on your sheets and if permitted, wash your sheets in the hottest water available. Don’t overload the washer! Triple rinse. While the sheets are in the wash, vacuum the mattress. Despite sheets separating you from the mattress, there will still be lots of dead skin cells and vacuuming them up removes a food source for many tiny critters, including dust mites. Pay special attention to the seams and vacuum them carefully. This is where many mites like to hide. If you are allergic to dust mites, this is an important step!
Spring Cleaning for Your Mattress:
Vacuum the mattress thoroughly using some kind of ‘beater brush’ attachment. Inspect the seams carefully, looking for living bugs or eggs. It may be that you can use your carpet floor vacuum for this. The beater brush will shake and scrape loose stuff that has attached to the fibers of the mattress cover. When done, spray the mattress thoroughly with SNiPER and allow it to dry thoroughly before putting sheets back on.
If you do find bedbugs, call a specialized pest control company that has expertise with these pests to help you deal with this problem. Or, the EPA has good guidelines here: https://www.epa.gov/bedbugs/do-it-yourself-bed-bug-control
Urine
Nok-Out can help with any odors in your mattress, including urine odors. Locate the source of the odor to find where to spray (remembering that Nok-Out and SNiPER both, need to be in direct contact with the odor source to be able to do their jobs) and spray directly on the source – allow to air dry. If the urine has soaked deep into the mattress, Nok-Out also needs to go that deep in order to get to all of the urine, so it may be a good idea to dilute some Nok-Out with 4 parts water and spray heavily. If this is the case, put fans on it to speed drying.
Bacterial Contamination
If your concern is for bacterial contamination, use SNiPER. Friendly to pets and people, SNiPER is lethal to microorganisms and can disinfect your mattress without leaving behind any toxic residues. Vacuum the entire bed thoroughly. Spray the entire bed until it is uniformly damp. Allow it to air dry.
What do I have to do to get the smell of Marijuna out of a room?
Hi Mr Barbosa – Thank you for writing. Getting rid of marijuana smoke odor is no different than getting rid of tobacco smoke odor. That smoke spreads around in the room and coats walls, ceiling and other objects in the room – just exactly the same as tobacco smoke would. Nokout works well against this – on contact with the odor source. So, since the source is on the walls and ceiling, you’ll need to spray the walls and ceiling. This is most efficiently done with a fogger type sprayer, but you can also use a pump up garden sprayer. Just spray the surfaces evenly and walk away, allowing it to air dry. That should take care of it for you. Give Ted a call at 866 551 1927 if you still have questions.
I’ve noticed that you recommend spraying your products for most applications.
Is there a reason you don’t recommend saturating surfaces with them by sponging them on directly?
I could imagine it would take longer to dry, but wouldn’t that result in longer contact with the surfaces?
I suppose the answer might be different for hard surfaces and fabric.
HI Sandi – good questions! And also good observations regarding how to get best results! I usually aim for the minimum that will be enough to do the job and I think that spraying may use less Nokout or Sniper and still achieve the same results. But it may be that you are absolutely correct in that some messes may need a heavier dose that could more easily be applied through sponging.
Typically, I think that hard surfaces are easier than soft or porous surfaces because you can just spray and then wipe to ensure even coverage. Sponging a surface such as your mattress may provide a bit more “agitation” than a simple spray and wipe application method, so you may well be right here. Good point!