Mattress Cleaning: An Overlooked but Important Component of A Clean Healthy Home

 

Although we spend an average of around 3,200 hours each year sleeping, when we ask our clients when they last cleaned their mattress, we tend to hear the same thing over and over. Very few people have even considered cleaning their mattress, and even fewer have ever had one professionally cleaned. 

 

The fact remains that our mattresses can become reservoirs for dust and debris, just like the other soft surfaces in our homes. It  may not be pleasant to think about, but as we sleep our bodies naturally shed skin cells. Dust mites feed on this material, and the waste products they produce can trigger asthma and allergy symptoms, especially in sensitive individuals.

 

Due to the sheer amount of time we spend in bed, the case can be made that mattress cleaning may be one of the most important yet overlooked components of a cleaner, healthier home. If you regularly wake up with respiratory symptoms like congestion, sneezing, or other allergy-like symptoms, your mattress may deserve a closer look.

 

Consider what accumulates in your bedding and mattress: Shed skin cells and body oils, everyday household dust, dust mite waste particles, pet dander, and pollen, do not differentiate between the soft surfaces in our homes. The result is the same: fine particles make their way into the mattress over time.

 

You may think that regularly changing your bedding addresses most of the issue, but although sheets and mattress protectors do  provide an important barrier between you and your mattress, fine and ultrafine particles can still reach deep into the fibers of your mattress over time. Unlike sheets and blankets which can be washed your mattress can not. Even regular vacuuming will address only some of the surface debris.

 

When you look at your mattress as part of your sleep microenvironment it becomes clear that a neglected mattress may be a glaring oversight in your home cleaning routine. When you lie down on your mattress, your breathing zone remains in close proximity to this particular soft surface for hours at a time. In addition, normal movement in bed disturbs particles that have settled into the mattress, allowing them to be airborne, effectively recirculating them into your home.

 

Professional mattress cleaning helps address this problem through thorough HEPA vacuuming, but it’s not just about suction. Household vacuums may remove visible debris from the mattress surface but fine particles can pass through or escape around regular filters, bags, and the seals and connections in a vacuum that is not HEPA filtered. True HEPA filtration is designed to capture at least 99.97% of particles measuring as small as .3 microns under test conditions. Professional HEPA vacuuming involves methodical, overlapping passes, attention to seams, tufts, and crevices. 

This is where HEPA vacuuming makes a meaningful difference, not only in how much material the equipment removes, but what happens to that material after it enters the vacuum.

 

While the HEPA vacuuming removes and contains the dry particulate matter trapped in the fibers of your mattress, the natural oils, perspiration, stains, and other residues that vacuuming alone can not remove require a different approach. 

 

For this portion of the cleaning, we deploy our  truck mounted, steam cleaning extractor. This hot water extractor is the same equipment used when we clean all of the soft surfaces in your home. Often referred to as “steam cleaning”, our system heats the water to approximately 180°F, helping to loosen and suspend oils, soils, and residues before powerful extraction removes them along with the cleaning solution.

 

At Professional Cleaning and Restoration Systems, we believe that creating a cleaner, healthier home means looking beyond the surfaces that are easiest to see and your mattress is a perfect example. It may look perfectly clean  but that does not mean that dust, oils, skin cells, allergens and other fine particulate matter have not accumulated over time.

 

Of course, cleaning your mattress is only one piece of the whole home equation. Your mattress does not exist in isolation from the rest of your bedroom or your home. Carpets, area rugs, upholstered furniture, bedding, indoor humidity levels, and the quality of the circulating air can all contribute to the environment where you sleep which is why we encourage homeowners to take a Whole Home Approach rather than focusing on any single surface or product.

 

For us, mattress cleaning is addressing an often overlooked, allergen rich, reservoir of dust, debris, and accumulated soils as part of a larger goal of helping people achieve the cleanest, healthiest, most comfortable homes possible.