Easily Banish Coffee Stains From Your Mattress Or Bedding With These Tips

Does anything beat the bliss of sipping on a cup of fresh coffee right from the comfort of your bed? That is, until tragedy strikes and your cup somehow topples out of your hands, leaving you with a coffee cleanup disaster. Coffee is one of the toughest stains to remove because coffee contains tannin, the same tricky culprits responsible for staining your teeth after a glass of red wine. Removing these stains becomes even more difficult if they are old and dry. 

For coffee stained sheets and mattresses, the first step is mopping up the excess. By using a clean, lightly damp rag to soak up as much coffee as possible, you prevent more from setting into the sheets and leaking onto the material. After you've gotten through the wettest part of the mess, the cleaning procedure will differ for the sheets and mattress. For best results, you'll want to hit them with a pre-soak treatment before laundering them, and whip up a stain removal solution for your mattress. Here's everything you need to know to get rid of coffee stains on your mattress and bed sheets. 

The good news for your bed sheets is that they can be taken off of the bed. And once you've dabbed up the excess coffee, it's time to rip those off the bed as soon as possible to both prevent the remaining coffee from seeping into the mattress and get them ready for their pre-wash stain treatment. In a bowl, mix together 4 cups of warm water, a half teaspoon of dish soap, and 1 tablespoon of white vinegar. Dab it (don't soak) onto the stained areas; the stain should begin to lift. The dish soap can cut through the oils of the coffee, while the vinegar breaks down the staining compounds. 

To take it a step further, try applying a bit of hydrogen peroxide to the stain with a clean rag or by mixing it with baking soda to form a paste. Hydrogen peroxide removes stubborn household stains because it is an oxidizer that can lift the tannin from the coffee stain. After you've finished treating the stain, run the sheets through the washing machine on the normal cycle with your preferred detergent. Give the sheets a good once-over to ensure the stains have fully lifted before putting them in the dryer or hanging them up. Allowing a stain to dry makes it much more difficult to remove. If the stain hasn't fully come out, repeat the stain removal and wash treatment until it has lifted entirely. 

The good news about the sheets being easy to take off? Sadly the good news ends there, because you won't be able to throw your mattress in the washing machine, and you can't soak it with an arsenal of cleaning products. Instead, you need to lift the stain while applying as little liquid as possible. You can use the same warm water, dish soap, and white vinegar stain removal solution you used for the sheets here, but don't add too much water to dilute the products, as this will needlessly make the situation more saturated. Add this mixture to a spray bottle, or gently dab it onto the mattress with a clean rag. Dab away at the stain, taking care to use a dry cloth to draw out excess moisture between rounds, repeating until it has lifted completely. 

After you've gotten the stain completely out, don't rush to put the sheets back on straight away. You need to give the mattress plenty of time to dry completely, or else you leave your mattress damp and susceptible to mold and mildew. Do not remake the bed until it is completely dry; you can use a fan to accelerate the drying process. To prevent this and laborious cleanup job for coffee and other unfortunate spills, consider buying a mattress protector, which can add cushioning to your mattress, guard it from stains, and often can be laundered in the washing machine.