How do I get a human pee stain (snd the smell) out of my mattress?

November 27, 2004 9:12 AM

My partner got so drunk he peed the bed last night. We have a wonderful, comfortable, expensive mattress that we love dearly and we would be very sad to get rid of it. So what's the best way to get the pee stain/smell out of it?
posted by anonymous to home & garden (21 answers total)

oh god what horrible hangover your partner must have.

Neutralize the odor by alternating baking soda and vinegar, after that try 'drying it out' by sprinkling dry baking soda on the stain so that it 'sucks up' all the moist. The vinegar smell will dissapear in a few hours. You'll have to sleep on something else for a few days.
posted by dabitch at 9:25 AM on November 27, 2004

I'd try an enzyme cleaner built to handle what's euphemistically known as "pet stains and odor." Nature's Miracle works well, and is available at any pet store. Anti Icky-Poo works better and costs less, but it's a lot harder to find. This stuff will cost a pretty penny, but it's cheaper than a new mattress.
posted by mechagrue at 9:27 AM on November 27, 2004

I use nature's miracle on the carpet a lot and it is a miracle, but if you use an enzyme cleaner like that on a larger stain, be prepared for the smell as the enzymes work. It is a very dank, pissy stench that peaks 2-3 days after use, then fades. All those products have pretty strong perfumes in them, and the combination of the two smells is kind of nasty. Ventilate, if possible. Alternately, it sounds like someone might owe you a hotel room for a night or two.

If you've got a carpet cleaner that sprays cleaning solution and sucks it up (like a Bissell Little Green or an upright steamer with upholstery attachment), I would recommend using that with a nature's miracle-water solution (see bottle for proportions). That'll get the solution in there without taking forever to dry, and maybe get up some of the original stain, too.

Direct sunlight is also a great odor remover, if that's possible.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:06 AM on November 27, 2004

Baking soda ia available all over the US and a bunch of european countries (in Sweden and Holland though, you'll have to hit the American shops for it), vinegar is available all over the world. I just thought that maybe the anonymous person is not living in teh USofA, maybe..... It could happen, right? If I wanted to try out that nature's miracle stuff or that enzyme cleaner y'all suggest - what is it?
posted by dabitch at 10:12 AM on November 27, 2004

*argh* I hate when I accidently write "teh". Oh and I'm serious, I have a cat that has accidents and might want to try out things other than vinegar+baking soda sometime.
posted by dabitch at 10:14 AM on November 27, 2004

I have a cat that has accidents

Does your cat get THAT drunk that he pees the bed?!?
posted by HifiToaster at 10:21 AM on November 27, 2004

Sounds like someone has a drinking problem. I might worry about that more than the mattress.
posted by caddis at 10:24 AM on November 27, 2004

Nature's miracle and other enzyme cleaners have enzymes that eat the critters (proteins? bacteria?) that make the smell. Not just pee, the bottle says it'll kill pretty much any organically-caused smell ("foods, blood, vomit, feces, grease, dirt, grass, smoke, and perspiration"). Ingredients list is unhepful: water, Nature's Enzymes, isopropyl alcohol, Natural Citrus Scent.

I use it straight on carpet stains, in the carpet cleaner for those "I know you peed somewhere you evil cat, I'm just not sure where" times, and in the washer for peed-upon things and washing that got left in the machine and got funky.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:32 AM on November 27, 2004

caddis please save the moralising/projecting/leaping-to-conclusions for the blue. Just because it's anonymously asked question doesn't neccessarily mean the drunken pissing is a regular occurance.
posted by romakimmy at 11:00 AM on November 27, 2004

oh, thanks Lyn Never, maybe I can find it if I can only figure out what those enzymes are called here. ;) I'll have a look in the pet shops.
posted by dabitch at 11:30 AM on November 27, 2004

dabitch: One would? I'm pretty sure you could get it at a random chemists in Holland, though admittedly I haven't bought it in ages.
posted by fvw at 11:39 AM on November 27, 2004

Just because it's anonymously asked question doesn't neccessarily mean the drunken pissing is a regular occurance.

To be fair, the poster provided far more information than was needed in their wording of the question. "How do you get a pee stain/smell out of a mattress" would have been both sufficient and more appropriate.
posted by rushmc at 12:24 PM on November 27, 2004

Bac-Out works wonders, and it has a pleasing lime odour.
posted by cmonkey at 1:16 PM on November 27, 2004

I was going to recommended Nature's Miracle for cats as well - nothing has a more pungent odor than cat piss (ew, if something does I do not want to know) - so my thought was that if it works on cat urine, human urine should be a snap. However, are the enzymes needed to combat cat urine and human urine so different that this might not be so?
Let us know the results of your experiment!
posted by batgrlHG at 2:01 PM on November 27, 2004

I was actually in this situation not too long ago. The girl I was laying next got really smashed and pissed all over my fouton mattress. She tried to blame it on the cat, but damn, it was a lot of piss.

Fortunately, I had a carpet cleaner with a brush/hose attachment along with a lot of enzyme cleaner.

I never had the heart to question her 'blame it on the cat' excuse. That's the most cat pee I've ever cleaned up.
posted by bob sarabia at 3:23 PM on November 27, 2004

The girl I was laying next to got...
posted by bob sarabia at 3:24 PM on November 27, 2004

The girl I was laying next to....

Who says romance is dead?

On a side note, your partner is probably really embarassed about having wet the bed as an adult (and I will be grownup enough to admit that I, ugh, know adults who have wet the bed one way or another), so I wouldn't give them too hard a time about it.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:01 PM on November 27, 2004 [1 favorite]

Try ExStink. It has the advantage of being a dry powder....won't soak your mattress like some of the enzyme-based cleaners...
posted by FredFeral at 4:03 PM on November 27, 2004

if your partner had been drinking all night long, he would have been pissing all night long too and eliminating urea and other waste metabolites. i would imagine then that his bedtime pee would be relatively free of urea that would break down to give that ammoniacal smell. so airing in direct sunlight, as suggested by Lyn Never, would probably suffice.
posted by kryptos at 5:40 PM on November 27, 2004

Before you do anything, check if you have a warranty from the mattress dealer. We have a very expensive foam-topped mattress that should only be cleaned professionally. Given the amount we dropped on the mattress, we went ahead and bought the additional warranty, which covers cleaning in these kinds of circumstances.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:48 PM on November 27, 2004

The girl I was laying next to....

Who says romance is dead?

yeah, we weren't knockin' boots, just sleeping next to each other.
posted by bob sarabia at 5:06 PM on November 29, 2004