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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jane Hoskyn

‘A cocktail of sweat, oils and dead skin’: how to clean your mattress – and why you should

Woman making bed, billowing sheet above mattress in bedroom.
Make your bed, tackle stains with shaving foam and dry thoroughly: some of the secrets to keeping your sleeping surface fresher for longer. Photograph: Fiordaliso/Getty Images

Your mattress is not just furniture, it’s family. You drool and sweat into it for hours, have sex on it, and shed millions of dead skin cells into it every night. It shares your DNA. Romantic or disgusting? Either way, that thing needs a wash.

Sticking a mattress in the washing machine is clearly about as feasible as putting the car in the dishwasher, but at least you can hose a car down and leave it to dry in the sun. With a mattress, especially one that contains foam (like most of the mattresses I’ve reviewed for the Filter), care, patience and a little bit of ingenuity are required when cleaning, or you could end up damaging it.

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