How Do You Clean The Mattress? (Leaking Diaper edition)

There is nothing like actually getting a whole night of sleep.  They are rare in my house hold.  But just the occasional waking up is not the biggest problem.  It's when your kid leaks his or her diaper and now the whole bed is wet, your child is crying because they are cold and wet.  So what do you do?  Do you actually change the whole bed setting and your childs clothes.  Or do you do what I did last night, just throw on a towel change your kids clothes and deal with it in the morning?

(My sons Twin size bed)

So this past week My toddler has leaked his diaper every night.  Time to go up in a size right?  Well I don't know if thats going to fix it.  His diapers fit perfectly, not to small, not to big.  So my research began this morning.  I found a few things you can do to help the leaking problem.

•   No drinks an hour before bed time
•   Going up in size of diaper
•   Changing diaper right before they go to sleep
•   Changing diaper again before parents go to sleep
•   Getting night time diapers

These are all great suggestions, and honestly I have tried most of them.  But, I haven't found anything really on CLEANING THE MATTRESS.  Even though I love Febreze, I still don't think it is REALLY cleaning the mattress.  Everything else I can throw in the wash, but the mattress?  Do I really need to go rent like a carpet cleaning machine or something?  These are a few of the suggestions I found on cleaning a mattress

•  Dampen any stains with mild detergent and warm water
•  Using warm water and dish soap
•  Check mattress tag for specific cleaning tips for that mattress

Ok, these are ok tips but my problem is that my kids mattress is an old german mattress, that is amazing by the way, but has NO TAG, and its a foam material, not like most mattresses.

(so you can see what the German mattress looks like)

Yes, I know it is completely important to wash the mattresses due to kids slobber, pee leaks, dead skin cells, milk leaks or juice leaks.  All these things over time become horrible bacteria but again, I CAN'T FIND ANY GOOD SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO CLEAN THE MATTRESS.  Yes you could always spray Lysol, but is it really cleaning the mattress?  

So now doing MORE looking around I think I found something to go by. But these are to take away smell, not initially cleaning.  

• Sprinkle dry laundry detergent and letting it sit for a few hours then vacuuming
• Sprinkle baking soda letting it sit for a few hours and then vacuuming 
• Spraying a half water half vinegar spray on mattress and then waiting for the vinegar smell that will eventually fade in time

So with these ideas and my own creativity I have tried a few things.  These are the things I used.

• Febreze
• Dreft fabric refresher and odor eliminator (2 oz) mixed with warm water and Snuggle softener
• Baking soda
• Lysol
• Febrezr odor eliminator powder 
• Dry Gains detergent (not in picture accidentally threw it away)

I sprinkled all the dry powder stuff on the whole mattress and went extra on the area he leaked.  Let it sit for about 4 hours and then vacuumed it.  After that I sprayed all the wet stuff, and let the fan dry it off for about 3 hours.  

By this point I was scared it would still smell since I didn't scrub the mattress but just added stuff to it.  When I went in for the sniff, it was a MIRACLE! It smelled as if I did throw it in the wash.  

(spray bottle got for $1 at the dollar tree)

• Half Vinegar
• Half Water

Then since I didn't know if anything leaked on his actual bed and since the bed is a plastic material, I cleaned the bed. I used my own mix of vinegar water.  Now no only does the mattress finally smell better than new, the whole room smells amazing!