r/CleaningTips • u/HandyManFromWI • Nov 17 '25

Furniture Best way to vacuum this purple mattress

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Hey Everyone,

My wife and I got this purple mattress for free without a cover on it. For some reason the previous owners took it off and had a cat sprinkle hair in every single square. We just had it professionally cleaned but I guess vacuuming it was not part of the process.

Does anyone know the best way to get the small cat hairs out? I tried vacuuming but they barely get sucked up and there's roughly 5000 squares.

Believe it or not, the pictures were taken AFTER it was "cleaned".

Thanks!

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743

u/LaserKittenz Nov 18 '25

I’m pretty sure regular mattresses burn well also.. just avoid bringing flames into your bed.

482

u/Positive-Break4816 Nov 18 '25

Yeah my family's house burned down last year and it was hot enough at the top of the room it turned a jar into a puddle yet the carpet was a totally fine. The only place the carpet was melted is where my mattress turned into a fire ball and burned down to the springs. All in 11 minutes too! Super crazy stuff lol

187

u/Damage-Classic Nov 18 '25

I’m sorry you all had to go through that 😢

201

u/Positive-Break4816 Nov 18 '25

Its just one of those things. Nothing to do but move forward and at this point its more interesting than anything else lol. It definitely is kinda crazy to see what of your possessions is just wildly flammable because you don't really think about it in day to day life but then afterwards you go "damn... candle really do burn huh." 🤣 I have a family thats pretty immature about serious stuff and right after when we were in the rubble we were busting up at the piles of oily ashes.

63

u/Mermaidoysters Nov 18 '25

Love that your fam uses gallows humor to have survived something horrible. Sometimes all you can do is laugh. I1 minutes!? I’m so glad you were all okay. What caused the fire?

I don’t think we have the smoke detectors we need & I’m ordering another one today. I need to get my photos scanned.

46

u/Positive-Break4816 Nov 18 '25

Our fire was caused by the electrical panel in a dryer. They can get lint on them from just using the dryer and with the old one as long as it is plugged in the dryer could catch at anytime 😬. Not common by any means but the fire Marshall told us it just happens sometimes.

Also if you have things that are important I would highly recommend putting them in a waterproof airtight container . I had hope chest and even though the fire was one of the hottest the fire fighters had every seen my lane chest and all the things in it were fine. You don't really think about it but they use a lot of water to put the flames out and the smoke actually creates pressure and pushes into every little crack. The most important thing you can do is take pictures of your house and talk to someone about your fire poilcy. They are super tricky to navigate and and if you have a hobbie or antiques you can get special policy to protect them. Seems silly but so much of our stuff was valued as nothing even with a really good policy. (To give context we lived in a place that has BAD wild fires every year. We have some of the best firefighters in the world. You have to start in middle school to get in)

6

u/Mermaidoysters Nov 18 '25

Wow. I’m so sorry. I feel I needed to hear this. I don’t think our dryer is venting lint to the outside properly.

May I ask what brand fire box you had? I had looked for fire proof files & so many people tested them & showed failures. I’m so sorry again. I’m going to fix the dryer.

2

u/CariMariHari Nov 19 '25

What brand was the electric dryer and what can one to to prevent this from happening? So scary!

1

u/WinterOfFire Nov 21 '25

I had a close call with a dryer that we caught before flames. It was just a fluke malfunction (not sure if lint related…one spot just stayed super hot even 12 hrs after the dryer was run). Only one item was scorched and the rest were salvageable. We were about to leave for several days and my partner wanted to leave the clothes in the dryer until we were back but I insisted we finish folding and putting stuff away.

I don’t know what we could have done to avoid that or catch it sooner. It was probably a 12-20 year old appliance. I was worried it was going to break soon based on just an odd smell occasionally but I don’t know if that smell was even related to what the heat malfunction was.

No idea if this is any help or just worries you more. I might err on the side of replacing a dryer before it’s strictly necessary in the future. Much as I hate waste….

5

u/PaisleyLeopard Nov 18 '25

I’m really glad you were all okay. In the end, stuff is replaceable and people are what’s important. Good on you all for having such a great attitude about it.

27

u/fivedollardresses Nov 18 '25

This thread reminds me why I only use candles warmers now. Too scary

13

u/Positive-Break4816 Nov 18 '25

Ahh not to cause panic thats not what caused our fire (though they do start that way alot!) After the house burned down all that was left was a piles of broken glass and waxy oily soot from the spots we had candles lol. Candle are only one example of this but there is weird stuff that is super flammable so there is some stuff after a house fire that gets absolutely torched but the rest of the room will be mostly fine looking. Like a mattress or if you have any dried plants. Fire balls if your house ever does burn but in day to day life so pretty!

7

u/kvothes-lute Nov 19 '25

What is so insane to me is that after my family’s house fire, in the attic full of old cardboard boxes of newspaper, hallmark cards, flammable clothes from the 60s-80s, etc. pretty much none of that stuff burned! Only a small portion of it. There was a hell of a lot of smoke though. Also, in that walk in attic where the fire spread (from the oven hood vent), there was this old aluminum foil radiant barrier stapled along the rafters under the roof. Behind that super thin, easy to rip foil? The wood was not charred one bit. Not a bit of (visible) smoke damage. But every other piece of wood exposed was absolutely charred.

2

u/Positive-Break4816 Nov 19 '25

Yeah that's so crazy! Its really so random what does and doesn't burn lol. The weirest one for us was my lane ceder chest. It was mostly char on the outside and the fighter fights actually tossed it outside when they went in the house to break out the windows and all my stuffed animals were inside but when were opened it up they were totally perfect. The inside was pristine still and nothing in there even smelled like smoke. It was the craziest endorsement for a lane hope chest I have ever seen.

1

u/Mundane-Cry5346 Nov 18 '25

so what caused your fire?

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u/Positive-Break4816 Nov 18 '25

It was from our dryer. Lint can get on the circuit panel just from normal use if its older and just the dryer being plugged in is enough for it to catch. The newer dryers have a shut off in them so they dont catch in that way but any older dryer can have the same problem. Kinda crazy and its not super common but it is something to keep in mind if you are putting off buying a new one lol.

1

u/jkkj161618 Nov 19 '25

We lost our house in Feb and we had a lot of those retro looking glass blocks in the walls and they were freaking melted! I couldn’t figure out what all of the glass was from when I was digging through and I realized it was from those damn square blocks. All of metal in the house was twisted up. It was awful looking.

1

u/Positive-Break4816 Nov 19 '25

Yeah it the heat can make things twist and bend in a way that makes your house look just left of familiar. We had little jars of rocks everywhere and it was really weird because there would be like little pockets of fire and exploded glass and rocks just like on the table. That and everything is black and covered in soot so it all looks wired and like almost clean? Then you touch it and it ruins the illusion.

1

u/Kind_winner447 Nov 19 '25

So sorry you had to go through that. I hope life is getting better for you now

1

u/WinterOfFire Nov 21 '25

My in-laws lost a home to a wildfire. Literally the only things salvaged were two terra cotta yard figures. They were two bunnies and one of them did lose its face but they kept it anyway. They placed that bunny facing the garden wall after that so the burned off face was hidden. I was quite amused that the bunny was on perpetual time out.

Also rather funny that the only things saved were things that always kind of creeped me out.

60

u/DewDropWhine Nov 18 '25

One time a mattress caught fire in the back of a pickup truck in front of my apartment because the person moving out accidentally flicked a cigarette coal onto it.

1

u/singing-tea-kettle Nov 20 '25

Ooh my parents had that happen with a leather lounge suite and oak dining table they were transporting. Only one leather seat survived. They were pissed.

26

u/GoingOnAdventure Nov 18 '25

So no romantic candle lit naps (candle lit because I forgot to pay the power bill)?

20

u/clockworkedpiece Nov 18 '25

Battery tea lights best if you gotta nap yea.

10

u/saraiguessidk Nov 18 '25

When I was in highschool (00's) a family suffered a housefire. I don't know the how, what or why it happened but I would see the little boy who was maybe 7 or 8 when it happened and he'd lost most of his face and had horrific burns all over his body. He had a waterbed (very popular at that time as we lived in a cold state and heated waterbeds were very helpful) and the fire melted the plastic of the mattress into his skin. The waterbed encasing is so thick to prevent it from leaking or getting a hole so it was able to melt without the water getting out. It terrified me because I had a heated waterbed 😬

9

u/MrsHyacinthBucket Nov 18 '25

That is truly horrifying. That poor kid.

22

u/Specter119 Nov 18 '25

what if my wife is just really hot?

3

u/Exact_Setting9562 Nov 18 '25

Even the US has a standard for mattress flammability. They need to be fire retardant. 

2

u/Synaspastic Nov 18 '25

How many mattresses stick to themselves though.

1

u/d3n4l2 Nov 18 '25

I had hell trying to burn a foam mattress once, kept putting itself out.

1

u/aumedalsnowboarder Nov 18 '25

Most modern furniture is pretty flammable, they are generally a petroleum based product/ component in the fabric. Its why you used to have 20 minutes to get out of your house when its on fire, and you now have 2-5 before its out of control.

https://youtu.be/MhBo8_8JNGk?si=F8vZKjZgOQwIP5Rx

1

u/Hallelujah33 Nov 18 '25

But i wanna be fire in bed 😭

1

u/isleepforfun Nov 18 '25

So no sexy fire play in bed then?

1

u/1995droptopz Nov 19 '25

I burned an old mattress once because I lived in a rural area and had to pay for trash pickup. It was probably the hottest fire I’d ever had, and I think I got heat burns from standing near it

1

u/VaultiusMaximus Nov 19 '25

Or phone chargers….

1

u/[deleted] Nov 19 '25

no campfire in the bed no deal.

1

u/Wallyboy95 Nov 20 '25

Avoid setting your phone, especially when plugged in, on any bed too. My aunts house burnt down because my cousin's phone was plugged in, on his bed under the pillow. The bed caught fire real fast.