What is actually in a mattress
An adult sheds skin continuously and sweats through the night, and both go straight through a sheet. Dust mites eat the skin. They are microscopic, they are in essentially every home, and it is not the mites themselves that cause symptoms but the allergen in their waste, which is light enough to become airborne when you sit down on the bed or turn over.
The reason the mattress matters more than the sofa is exposure time. You are in contact with it for seven or eight hours a night, with your face inches from the surface, breathing air that has just been disturbed by your own movement.
The three-stage clean
Lift what is loose. A HEPA-filtered pass over the whole surface, both sides where the mattress is turnable, and into the piping and seams around the edge, the seams collect far more than the flat faces do.
Treat what is stuck. Sweat and body-oil yellowing, spills, and accidents each get their own treatment and time to work. Odor is treated at the source, because a mattress that smells masked will smell like a mattress again in a fortnight.
Extract. Enough moisture to release the soil, taken straight back out again. Nothing gets pushed deeper into the foam, and nothing stays wet.
Why low-moisture is not optional here
Carpet dries because air moves through and around it. A mattress cannot: it is a sealed block of foam or springs inside a quilted cover, and there is no way to get air to the middle of it. Water that gets past the surface layer stays there, and a mattress that stays damp inside is a worse problem than the one you were trying to solve.
So the method is deliberately restrained. Surface and near-surface soil comes out; the interior never gets wet. That is also why the bed is usually usable the same night.
What to do before we arrive
Strip the bed and put the bedding on to wash, the mattress and the bedding are one system, and cleaning half of it is half a job. If the mattress has a zip-off cover, leave it on and we will work out whether it comes off. Clear enough floor space around the bed for someone to work at all four sides.
If a child’s mattress is on the list, mention it when booking. It changes nothing about the products, they are non-toxic and biodegradable either way, but it tends to change the order we work in, so the room that needs to be ready by bedtime is done first.
