How to Clean Your Latex Mattress

Your latex mattress is an investment in your good sleep for many years to come. With proper care and cleaning, a Latex for Less Latex Mattress can last well beyond its 20-year warranty. It isn’t always easy to know what to do, though, to help protect your mattress for many years — especially with so much conflicting information found on the Internet.

These are the steps you need to take to keep your latex mattress clean and properly cared for, so it can serve your needs for many years to come.

Why Do You Need to Clean Your Mattress?

Think of the amount of time you spend in bed. Even if you aren’t sleeping the entire time, the odds are good that you spend about one-third of each day in bed. Most of us can’t stand to go an entire day without taking a shower. Yet, you might go years without giving a thought to cleaning your mattress.

Even with latex mattresses that have added benefits, such as natural resistances to microbes and bacteria, they can still create an atmosphere that is ripe for unpleasant smells to develop. Cleaning your mattress, regularly, helps to remove germs, viruses, bacteria, and more that may be hiding within the depths of your mattress.

Can You Just Hose it Down with Cleaning Products?

One of the primary reasons people choose natural latex mattresses —like our mattresses at Latex for Less —is that they are healthy to bring into your home and expose to your family. We go out of our way to bring you mattresses that are made without toxic ingredients and noxious chemicals. Using cleaning products filled with these types of items defeats the purpose, creating an unhealthy atmosphere inside your home in the name of clean.

At the same time, some of the cleaning products on the market today are caustic to humans as are the materials used to make some mattresses. Exposing your mattress to these types of products may cause it to break down faster than normal, and may even negate your warranty.

There are better ways to clean your mattress. More importantly, there are healthier ways to clean your mattress. Methods that do not result in unhealthy situations for you. How can conventional cleaners promote worse health for you? These are just a few key examples:

• Causing upper respiratory problems
• Promoting difficulty breathing
• Generating off-gassing
• Causing headaches
• Initiating rashes and redness on your skin

These aren’t ideal for you or your family, and can be avoided with options for greener cleaning methods instead.

Why Are Green Cleaning Methods Better?

Not only are greener cleaning methods and products better for your family, they are also better for the planet. These are just a few reasons to choose eco-friendly cleaning products when cleaning your mattress.

1. Improves air quality inside your home. According to the EPA, the air inside the modern home is far less healthy for your family than the air outside. Even in large cities where smog is a significant problem. Adding more chemicals into the mix only exacerbates the problem in today’s energy efficient homes.
2. Makes your home a safer haven for children and pets. You love the people and animals you share your home with. Green cleaning products make your home a safer haven for them, and reduces risks of accidental poisonings and worse from cleaning products.
3. Saves you money on your cleaning efforts. Believe it or not, many green cleaning products are quite inexpensive. They include things readily available in stores and supermarkets such as: baking soda, vinegar, salt, lemons, and essential oils for a hint of fragrance.

Of course, you can’t ignore the fact that greener cleaning products often help to preserve the structural integrity of products in your home, including the natural latex used in our mattresses.

Cleaning Your Latex Mattress

If your latex mattress comes with a mattress cover, remove the cover before cleaning. Follow the care instructions for the mattress concerning washing and drying the cover. Some require spot washing and air drying, for instance, while others can be placed in washing machines (on gentle cycles) and dryers on low heat.

If your mattress doesn’t come with a removable mattress cover, consider spot cleaning to address stains that might occur in your mattress. Baking soda is an excellent tool for doing this. Mix with a tiny bit of vinegar (to create a dry paste) for stubborn stains.

1. Gently scrub baking soda onto the mattress. Brush the baking soda paste onto the stains, and allow them to sit for about ten minutes, or 15 to 20 minutes for deep stains. Then brush the baking soda away to reveal a whiter mattress cover underneath.
2. Vacuum the mattress. You can use a hand vacuum in many cases for this part, but may wish the deeper cleaning power of a traditional vacuum cleaner. This will help get what’s on the surface of the mattress as well as addressing items buried deep within the layers of your mattress as well.
3. Allow your mattress to dry. It must be completely dry before replacing the cover. Otherwise, mold or mildew could develop with devastating health consequences.
4. Rotate your mattress. It isn’t necessary to rotate latex mattresses for the sake of avoiding sags and lumps. It does, though, help to spread the “sleeping area” around a bit, and to reduce the amount of dirt and debris that may sink into certain areas of your mattress. You may rotate every time you wash your sheet, once per season, or even twice a year, if you choose to do so. Again, though, it’s not necessary.

Do’s and Don'ts

Take into account these “do’s and don’ts” with respect to cleaning your latex mattress or keeping it clean.

Don’t: While some people highly recommend “sunning” mattresses to get them clean, that is very harmful to natural latex. In fact, direct sunlight can cause the cellular structure of your latex mattress to break down. Allow your mattress to dry inside your home or in the shade if airing it outside.

Do: Another thing you can do to protect your mattress between cleanings is to invest in a waterproof mattress protector. This is a highly cost-effective method for protecting your mattress and your mattress investment.

Order Your Latex for Less Mattress

Latex for Less is committed to offering you an affordable mattress-buying experience without sacrificing quality and health in the process. We are the manufacturer, and our mattresses ship direct to you with two firmness levels in one mattress. Read our customer reviews and order your latex mattress today, and see what a difference you can enjoy in price and quality when you buy direct.