Can I remove a pet stain and odor from a beanbag?

March 6, 2019 7:22 AM

I've got a giant beanbag that our cat peed on once during a brief sickness. Is it possible to remove the odor?

I've tried a few different products from the grocery store that purport to be pet stain and odor removers, but the smell persists. The complicating factor, I think, is that the urine may have reached some of the foam inside the beanbag.

This is a 7-foot beanbag, and impossible to open, much less remove the insides, without creating a huge linty mess that covers the entire room.

Is it possible to get rid of the smell or should I just get rid of the beanbag?

posted by msbrauer to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

From sad experience: no. If treating the surface doesn't do it (I assume the odor removers you've tried are enzyme-based) then you either need to treat the inside too, or just trash it.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:27 AM on March 6, 2019

The only way to get the beans would be to soak the whole entire thing in Oxyclean & as the foam beans float I can't see a how that could actually be managed. Maybe in a bathtub with something heavy on top. You can buy new refill beans & then soak the cover but that doesn't seem an option in your case if it's not meant to be opened so you might have to get rid of it & get a new one.
posted by wwax at 7:39 AM on March 6, 2019

I don't know how you would get rid of the smell once it's in the stuffing, but would it be possible to turn the whole thing upside down so the smell part is against the floor? If the urine didn't soak very far down into the stuffing, maybe that would at least contain the odor so you could salvage the use of the beanbag?
posted by mccxxiii at 7:56 AM on March 6, 2019

Please don't try just turning the pee spot down to the ground, for one thing, it's just going to make that bit of floor stink, and also it's... still going to smell, it'll only go away in a superficial sense in that you may not personally smell it anymore as a person whose nose is accustomed to normal levels of cat pee smell, but anyone else will.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:05 AM on March 6, 2019

Have had the same experience with a similar bean bag, and no, there's nothing you can do to to get rid of the smell. The urine most definitely reached the foam beads inside, and if you've moved it at all, the foam beads have shifted and now there are urine beads all over the place.

We tried everything, believe me. Spot washing, soaking in OxyClean, finally taking it and a large bottle of enzyme cleaner to the laundromat and washing the whole damned thing in an industrial sized washer. The foam beads just held on to the scent.

Sorry. Trash it.
posted by cooker girl at 8:19 AM on March 6, 2019

If I really, really, really wanted to keep it, and was determined to not open it AND attempt to save it, I'd put it, in sections if necessary, in the tub with VINEGAR water. Though I love OxyClean, I've never used it for cat smell issues, just vinegar. You *might* have some luck by using vinegar water and a spray bottle and heavily dousing the beanbag.

Or, y'know, you could toss the beads, clean the cover, and just replace the beads with fresh...
posted by stormyteal at 10:14 AM on March 6, 2019

My cat recently puked on a beanbag chair and, having gone down the route of emptying the polystyrene balls out to wash the cover, intending to replace with fresh ones, I seriously wish I'd thrown the whole thing out without trying to save it. I have cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and am still finding polystyrene bits turning up in/on/underneath things. And I don't even think the cover was meant to be washable.
posted by randomonium at 11:27 AM on March 6, 2019

If I was trying to assign an impossible task to someone, I would consider your ask a contender. Bin it.
posted by Jubey at 12:45 PM on March 6, 2019