How do I get laundry detergent out of a mattress?

Funny title I know.

My wife calls me today and tells me that while she's at her mom's, her mom's two foster kids, ages 3 and 1, got into their laundry detergent and poured poured three whole bottles out onto the bed. Which by a day of playing had had it's sheets pulled off and the bare mattress was exposed.

My wife said she walked into the room to get my daughter, who came out of this mess remarkably clean (pun intended) and said she smelled something that was so nice and clean, like fresh laundry.

So yeah, any advice on how to get a lot of detergent out of a mattress, and more importantly how to dry it?

If we pressure wash it I'm so gonna film all those suds.

By the way, this three jugs, 50oz each.

Carpet cleaner with a stair attachment.

id start with pressure washer... then move to a wet vac to pull as much out as possible... rinse n repet...

well.. at least the mattress will smell clean for a long time

The bed bugs are getting a bubble bath.

FIRE DEPT, really, call them. Explain the FOSTER KIDS story

Better yet, show up at the firehouse with the mattress in the bed of a pickup and the little scamps in tow, tell them your sob story and give them your best 'would ya believe it?" Dick-Van-Dyke sorta look. They'd be monsters if they turned you away.

Well, they kinda aren't foster kids, they're my wife's cousin's kids. The baby was burned on her hand when she was about two weeks old. It was never explained, and they didn't take her to the hospital about it either. Social services stepped in and they were promptly taken away. They both wound up failing drug tests, and have been in and out of the clink ever since. We think the baby was burned while they were making meth. As far as I'm concerned they can rot there.

Well they wanted them to stay in the family, so my mother in law stepped up and took them in. There was still a custody fight over who would get the kids (my MIL, or the actual state-selected foster parents) Wife's cousin winds up signing over his rights to my MIL, so she now has them until they're 18. I guess that mean's they aren't foster kids, but that's easier to say than "my-wife's-cousin's-kids-that-my-mother-in-law-has-custody-of."

I'll be sure to pass it along that we should take the mattress to the fire dept.

yea, use the FDs water, your water bill would be horrendous by the time you washed all that detergent out.

I think I'd probably start by trying to get as much out w/o suds as I could by using a shop vac and then a professional carpet cleaner that pushes water and sucks it back out. A pressure washer is going to make it foam and take forever. Maybe for the final rinse - but soaking it in a lake would be the most effective way to get the rest out. It would also pollute the lake so don't do that.

new mattress?

mad_machine wrote: new mattress?

This. I can't see any time/cost effective way to get all that out.

z31maniac wrote:

mad_machine wrote: new mattress?

This. I can't see any time/cost effective way to get all that out.

Although it is pre-soaked so all blood from the murdered children wouldn't stain.

Throw the matress in the bed of a pickup truck and go down to the local car wash. Bring $20 in quarters and you swim suit. Wait for a nice hot sunny day, however, so it can dry outside.

Just turn it over!

If you do use a shop vac to suck the stuff out, get a defoamer (should be with the carpet cleaning machines at Sears, Ace, Etc). It's really cheap, like a few dollars a quart. Add a few ounces of it to the tank of the shop vac prior to socking up the soap. That will keep the detergent from foaming up as much; otherwise the bubbles might get sucked into the motor and damage the bearings.

Example of a defoamer:

http://www.amazon.com/Cul-Mac-5353A-Ace-Carpet-Defoamer/dp/B000HM8I2I

I'm going to 2nd the new mattress idea. You just aren't going to be able to get the detergent out from all the layers, so you'll waste a ton of time trying and still won't get it out.

You may think the smell of the detergent is nice an clean, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was an irritant at higher concentrations over time.

I had a my dog trash my apartment once... It was a 90lb husky.. He broke free from the cage and shredded the couch.. tore the blinds off the windows.. managed to open the kitchen cabinets and... well... It seriously would have taken 10 people all night to throw the kind of party this dog had in about four hours..

The worst of the mess.. He chewed open a bottle of laundry detergent which of course shot all my food right through him... The results from that mess were easier to clean up than the mess from the other half a bottle of detergent in the carpet...

Basically a steam cleaner was required.. Lots of water and a shop vac should get it done.

Invert the mattress on a thick bed of kitty litter and sleep somewhere else while the bulk of the detergent is wicked out. Then throw it away and buy a new one. Detergents are great at penetrating, clinging and making water bond to stuff - it's what they do. You'll never get good enough flow with water to get the stuff that's soaked in to the core.

Note: We have a Stearns and Foster we got about 8 years ago about which we often say out loud that it's one of the best purchases we've ever made. They're worth it.