What's a good way to clean and disinfect a mattress?

Call the carpet cleaners in your area until you find one that will clean your mattress. They will use a truck mounted (be sure they have a truck mount! The portable ones do not have enough suction to remove the water that is applied and you then end up with a whole new problem, mold!) hot water extraction cleaner to clean the mattress.

Remember that whatever you use to clean the carpet, you will be in CLOSE CONTACT with it for long periods of time! dry cleaning chemicals can be very nasty stuff. Is it something you want to lay in?

There are a number of ways to clean up a mattress. Start with a good vacuum and a clean filter and bag. Give it a thorough vacuum, you should be doing this often, like everytime you change the sheets... here are some facts on dust mites:

Dust mites produce 200 times its body weight in excrement during their normal life span

They can live without food for up to a year.

90% of people with asthma have an allergy to the house dust mite.

People are exposed to up to 2 million mites in their mattresses and up to 500,000 mites can live in a square meter of carpet.

Dust mites feast for up to 170 days on our shed skin.

Dust mites spread rapidly. A female dust mite can lay 80-300 eggs.

And they're living with us everynight! Yuck!

You need to remove them, either by vacuuming or using a good quality enzyme that will kill them, like the Norwex one.

Another thing that works really well is to call on the people who steam clean rugs, most of them will work on mattresses too, they do a great job and will not charge much. They have the special cleaners to get rid of stains and the steam helps kill the nasty bugs. Also, because they use so little water, I would drag the mattress to the sun and let the sun do it's work to clean and disinfect. Good luck!

Last resort, buy a new mattress and cover it with the dust mite covers from the start.....

I wouldn't advise getting the mattress wet at all - you can get this dry cleaning powder at places like Walmart or even online. Or you can just use regular baking soda and vacuum it out to deodorize. I get small stains out by spraying some vinegar, sprinkling baking soda, and then spraying some more vinegar. As it bubbles it lifts out the stain, then when it's dry you can just vacuum it all up. If the mattress is really dirty and really needs a wash, you can use plain old hot water and vinegar in a steam machine that has a hose attachment. It won't smell after it dries and it kills bacteria.

Since all of my matresses have damask fabric covering them, they cannot get wet or the fabric will be ruined. So, I use dry carpet cleaning granules. Chem-Dry, Capture and Resolve all make them. You just toss them all over, agitate a little if there are any stains (I spilled coffee and it left a ring), leave it on until it is dry and vacuum it up. I vacuum it every time I change the sheets just to keep the mites at bay.

Use upholstery dry cleaning system, works good, does not wet the mattress. Can deodorize with baking soda after if need be.

Vacuum real good. Rent a rug cleaner..