How does one clean a mattress? (Now with a special bonus question!)

Factual Questions
1

I’m moving next Saturday and I’ve had a realization: this is as good of a time as any to clean up my mattress. You see, my mattress was my ex boyfriend’s (so Lord knows what type of horrible things are on it :eek: … . . the bed itself may very well have the herpes) and now mine. I don’t want to get a new one because this is truly the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on.

So: how on earth do I clean it? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.

Now, the bonus question: I have one of those visco-elastic memory cell (ie: FOAM) bed pads that is about a year old. I’d also like to give this sucker a clean. Any thoughts on how I might do this?

Thank you!

2

Here’s one person’s approach. I’ve never cleaned a mattress myself unless it was soiled somehow (like when my kid got sick on hers once) put I flip ours regularly, and I always use a mattress pad. When I had one of those memory foam toppers, I put the mattress pad over it too, so I figured it was a clean as the mattress itself. * <shrug>*