Does Urine-Gone (or similar products) work? If not, what does?

January 6, 2006 1:37 PM

AsSeenOnTVFilter: I have a lot of pee stains/smells that I need to remove from carpet and mattresses. I've looked up other threads, but what I specifically want to know is: Is Urine-Gone (or it's apparent twin, Urine-Off) worth buying?

(Not from me personally, but from kid's accidents, dog's accidents, and men's/teenage boy's inabilty to frickin' AIM in our carpeted bathrooms. Who the hell thought carpeting bathrooms was a good idea?) I've used something called "Out!" in the past for pet urine on carpet, but it smelled awful (as in heavy perfume awful) until it dried. I don't really want to wait for something to be delivered, I'd like something I can go out and buy. (I've seen the Urine-Gone at the local Bedsheets & Kitchen Stuff type stores.) If it's not worth buying, what is?

Also, how do I get blood stains out of a feather bed? I tried Oxi-Clean and it just took things from bad (large dark stain identifiable as blood) to worse (larger, somewhat lighter stain that is not identifiable as blood, but now looks like something really, really gross.) Of course, I'm not in the habit of showing my uncovered feather bed to all and sundry, and *I* know what the stain is, but it would be nice to get it out if I could.

posted by Shoeburyness to home & garden (8 comments total)

I don't know about Urine Gone, but a product I use and I know many other people use for urine odors is "Nature's Miracle". It does a great job on cat urine, which I think is even more potent than dog & human urine, so hopefully this will help you. You can buy it at many pet stores.
posted by catfood at 1:47 PM on January 6, 2006

I frequently use Resolve for kid and pet stains. There's one with 2 chambers, and when you squirt it out the stuff mixes, presumably doing some sort of oxidation reaction. That gets a lot of stuff out - I wouldn't be surprised if that works on your blood stains. Though it may be the same as Oxi-Clean, which you have already tried. Also, the regular Resolve in the red squirt bottle has some sort of magic enzyme in it that seems to work quite well on anything nasty and biological. I'd try saturating the smelly bits with that, leaving it for a looong time, and cleaning it out.
posted by selfmedicating at 1:56 PM on January 6, 2006

My experience has been that a lot of things will work on urine smells in carpet but little will work on them in carpet PADDING and nothing will work on them once soaked into MDF, plywood, moulding or gypsym board.

A friend and I had moderate success pulling up carpet, painting the MDF with Kilz and putting the carpet back down. The areas where we were able to replace the carpet and padding improved more.
posted by phearlez at 2:03 PM on January 6, 2006

Hydrogen peroxide might work on the blood stain. I've used this method successfully on sheets and a couch cushion, but never on a feather bed. So try it in a small bit of the stain first:

Pour enough hydrogen peroxide on the blood so that the stain starts bubbling. Let it bubble a bit - maybe 15-30 seconds - than take a dry absorbent rag and press down, blotting as much of the liquid as you can. When the current rag is too wet, swap it out for a dry one. Continue blotting with dry rags until the blood has come out. Don't RUB, just BLOT. You may have to add more h.p.

I guess you would have to be careful of the original color of the feather bed getting bleached out by the h.p., but what have you got to lose. The h.p. is actually supposed to be more successful on old dried stains than fresh bloodstains.

Also my mother-in-law just recently got a big red wine stain (thanks to a slightly tipsy Christmas Eve guest) out of her newish white carpet using Kaboom. Not sure of its properties on other stains, but she was very happy with the outcome. I'm sure it's available at your typical bath & kitchen store.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 2:22 PM on January 6, 2006

Hah! Just recently going through this with my own living room rugs (two small dogs.)

Two things:

Nature's Miracle does work but takes two or three applications.

Then, head to your local dollar general and buy as many cans as you can afford of Tuff Stuff. I have not seen it anywhere but Dollar General. I have tried 7 different carpet cleaner brands, including Resolve, Armor All, and some others. Tuff Stuff is the only thing I've found that works everywhere on everything. Google it - plenty of places carry it, apparently. I just haven't seen it elsewhere. Dog urine stains, cigarette ash, you name it - it all comes up.
posted by TeamBilly at 2:32 PM on January 6, 2006

Our local ABC affiliate did a consumer test of UrineGone and a two week followup as well. Bottom line: it's not perfect, but it's not bad.
posted by lhauser at 4:22 PM on January 6, 2006

Another vote for Nature's Miracle. It's the primary reason that I didn't murder my second dog.
posted by LittleMissCranky at 10:35 PM on January 6, 2006

I hear that Nature's Miracle isn't as good since the original company got bought out, or something. (All hearsay though.) I have had excellent luck with Bac-Out, available at drugstore.com as well as many other online and offline retailers. It got out week-old cat hork! It's great!
posted by calistasm at 10:30 PM on January 7, 2006