How to clean pee out of a mattress (or carpet, or anything for that matter)

EPISODE 064: How to clean pee out of a mattress

Welcome to the Go Diaper Free Podcast where we're all about helping you stop depending on diapers as early as birth. I'm your host, Andrea Olson, author and mom of five ECed babies. This is episode 64, How to clean pee out of a mattress (or carpet, or anything for that matter). 

Okay, you guys, this is where I put in the hashtag, #AskMeHowIKnow. I have been doing elimination communication with my babies from birth, over five babies. I have had pee on my mattress, my baby's mattress, our former couch, which we appropriately nicknamed the peepee couch. Our brand new carpets that cost thousands of dollars, our rugs, you name it, it's been peed on by a baby, not very often and probably just as often as if I were doing regular toilet training with all five of these.

Actually everything probably would have got peed on a lot more if I wouldn't have done EC. So I do use a mattress wool soaker pad in all of our beds where babies are. So I rarely need a clean pee out of the mattress, but sometimes I'm not prepared or the baby pees on a different beloved surface and I need to clean that pee out so it doesn't smell. Maybe you've been in the same boat? I definitely have been. Definitely, I'm not not a fan of a pee smell on anything. So the great thing is that baby pee is not usually that smelly, okay. And it cleans up nicely. The better thing is that the product I use to clean up baby pee also works for throw up, poop, mud, wine, juice and blood even if it sat there for a really long time and on most absorbent surfaces.

So it is truly a lifesaver. I am not an affiliate of their products. I don't work for them basically. And I do hope that this podcast is helpful for those of you with baby pee cleanup questions because this is the best method I found to clean baby pee out of a mattress or carpet or anything else. So although I've read up on several natural homemade pee cleaning concoctions, which you're welcome to research and use, when dealing with bodily fluids, I reached straight for the sure thing. I use a product called OUT! It's OUT! orange oxy stain and odor remover. There's a link to that over in the show notes at godiperfree.com/64.

It has a puppy dog image on the bottle. But fear not, it is not just for pups, OUT! works so well for babies and toddlers and all the messes they create with their bodily fluids. And at the time of recording this podcast, this is what I use and it's available at Amazon. If you can't find it, find something that cleans with oxy power. So here's what to do. And I do have a video, a demonstration of me cleaning out the pee out of a rug. That is also on the show notes over there, and it's also on YouTube. So check that out if you just want to watch me do it.

But here's a description of what I do. I blot the area with a towel or paper towels to get as much pee out as I can at first. I remove any solids if it was throw up - ugh, the stories - from the soiled area. First, you always want to test an area of your carpet or mattress or couch to ensure that OUT! will not stay in the material but I've never had that experience myself even with a brand new carpet. Next, let's clean it up. So we've blotted it. We're going to saturate the soiled area with OUT! orange oxy stain and odor remover. And when I say saturate, I mean saturate it. Spray it so much that it will OUT!-soak your mattress padding or carpet padding, spreading a few inches beyond the edges of and deeper than where you think the pee or whatever other fluid it is has spread.

So we want to get further than it has spread and we want to get just as deep into any padding below it. Let it sit for some time. I usually will let it sit for about 30 minutes covered up with a damp rug or a hand towel. The bottle says five minutes minimum, but I usually leave it soak for 30 minutes to several hours depending on how bad it is. And my life is so busy with five kids, I usually leave it for several hours honestly. After some time you're going to come back and you're going to blot it again with a towel or paper towels. Then we're going to check to see if the oxy has eaten up all the smell or any stains, if it's mud or wine or not.

So how do you check if it's a done deal? I reach down and smell it. Sorry. I smell it just to be sure the smell is gone. I don't really know of a nicer way to check. So put your nose to the mattress or carpet and see if it smells like urine or whatever it was still. And you want to check several different areas, especially at the edges. If it does still smell, you're going to repeat the entire process once more and repeat it till it's done. But I've never had to do it more than twice. If the smell is gone and the OUT! appears to have worked, it's time to let it dry.

If it's my mattress, I will either keep the sheets off the bed until it's dry to the touch or if I need to get to bed, I'll lay a fresh dry towel on top of this spot and put my fitted sheet back on the mattress over that towel. I then remove the towel layer the next day after it has absorbed the rest of the moisture from the cleaning activity. If it's carpet, I lay a fresh, dry hand towel on top of the spot on the carpet to remind myself to not step on it until it's completely dried or I leave it uncovered to air dry if it's not in a trafficky, a high traffic area. Drying can take up to a day if it was a large spot. And if it's our couch, I do the same thing as I do with the carpet, so no one sits on it and smells like orange all day long.

I will put a dry towel on top of that also to let other people know not to sit there. By the way, OUT! also makes an extra strength non-orange version that I've recently been using on bigger, badder spots and the much more pungent puppy pee that we've had lately. So there's also that, but I definitely think that this brand is the best, and again, I don't work for them. I just want to share with you, if you got bodily fluids you need to get it. Don't just try to use vinegar or whatever. Use what really works, and this definitely works. The oxy actually eats out the sound and eats the smell. Not the sound, it eats the smell and eats up all of the little particles and stuff, it's magic. And that's it, you guys, that's how to do it.

You blot it, you douse it, you let it sit, you blot it again, you sniff it, you reapply if you need to. Cover it with dry towel till the next day. Pretty simple, right? So I hope this has helped you. On the show notes webpage over at godiaperfree.com/64, you'll find a video walkthrough of me cleaning an actual spot of baby pee out of my rug. Check it out and leave a comment on the blog with any questions or tips of your own for getting pee out of a mattress, the carpet, or any other surface. And also if it's puppy pee that you're cleaning up, this prevents them from re-marking the same spot because it actually gets that smell out. So just a little tip for those of you with puppies and babies. All right. And then I have a reader tip as well. Two of them, real quick. 

This is Jari from Melbourne, Australia. She started EC at six days old and her baby was five months old when she gave us this tip. “My tip: Put baby in leggings without a nappy or a diaper. It contains the mess, but you can quickly tell if there has been a miss.” So she's talking about baby tights. She also suggests “using a large plastic tablecloth as a play mat if you're cursed with carpet.” And I think that's a great idea. Some of them have that backing that keeps them from slipping on the picnic table. That's what you want to use. If you don't have enough yoga mats to cover your carpet, you can do that for a not so mobile baby. I also definitely suggest using a diaper as a backup when doing EC because it helps them learn a lot more as long as you're still working together.

And then if not, you can use training pants or underwear. But if your baby doesn't pee on the floor whenever, wherever, and can take themselves while naked, then fine, no big deal. But then otherwise you might be buying a lot of OUT! over time. And you can actually listen to my podcast episode on how to keep your baby from peeing everywhere. There's something to that effect. So thanks for your tip Jari, love it, the plastic tablecloth. 

And then Anette in Germany, she started EC with her fourth kid when she was three months old. “Successful touchdown at 21 months.” Her best tip is to take it easy, no stress. She used normal cloth nappies, which are diapers to those of us in America. “That way I could do EC and be totally relaxed about carpets, etc.” So she used a backup and she still was done before most people start toilet training. Score mama, great job. 

So, okay, that's all I have for today, how to clean pee out of a mattress or carpet or whatever you have. Until next time. Happy pottying. I'm Andrea Olson and this is the Go Diaper Free Podcast at godiaperfree.com and I look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.