How to clean a couch from urine?

29.09.2020

Nobody’s safe from getting urine on the couch (unless you don’t cover with a film the entire set of upholstered furniture you have in your house/office/hotel/club). Since it is generally odd and inconvenient to sit and sleep on such cover, sooner or later, its owner can face the need to clean it up from the piss. And the best options for doing it are considered by us in this article.

A few words about how to secure yourself from urine getting on the upholstery:

When you put a person on the couch and that person is having a urinary incontinence problem or is simply senior, it would be a wise decision to put an oilcloth or soft rubberized lining under their bed linen – it will keep moist off the couch. Do it analogically with a small child or an adolescent who’s having a problem of urinary incontinence.
Those having pets shall train them first rightly so as to avoid a pet jumping on the upholstered furniture if it has a problem with peeing on it. A good alternative would be wearing special pampers for cats or dogs but litter training is a must for having a pet. Having an acute problem, you’d need to put an oilcloth on every upholstered furniture or to get rid of a pet (you decide). Also, to prevent cats from marking their territory in the house, buy regular rubbing alcohol in a drugstore, pour it into a spray bottle, using which, spray it everywhere where you don’t want a cat to pee. This smell is considered a repellent for cats to pee where it is applied.
Use furniture with hydrophobic upholstery. Read more about it at the end of this text.

The best remedies to clean up a couch

The odor of urine is sharp and unpleasant. It lasts long if you don’t get rid of it. Urine, after it is absorbed in upholstery or carpet, changes the color of it, and the stain is hard to get rid of.

All remedies for getting rid of fresh urine and its stains can be divided into 2 categories: those you can make from what you have in your house and those you can buy in a store. The first group has the advantage of a low price but their efficacy is not always the same high for various types of cloth. The second can be chosen by you based on your type and color of cloth but their price is usually higher, whilst efficacy can be the same as of the first. If you have all ingredients, wish, and time to prepare the remedies of the first group – then use them! Otherwise, use something bought from the store.

Remember! Anything you’re about to use, use first on a small site of cloth to find out its efficacy for the cloth and refrain from damaging it!

The best remedies from the store, which most efficiently address the question of how to clean up the couch from stains, are:

DuftaPet as sprays, bottles, and canisters (Germany, Dufta Company, 8.5-85 oz);
Urine Free Max spray (Poland, Over Zoo Company, 8.5 oz);
Nature’s Miracle bottle (USA, Nature’s Miracle Company, 32/64/128 oz);
Urine Destroyer bottle (USA, Simple Solution Company, 32 oz);
Sanera Еnzym spray (Sweden, 17 oz) – to remove odors;
Neutralizor Dog&Puppy spray (USA, Capsull Company, 17 oz);
Pet Mess Cleaner spray (USA, Arm&Hammer Company, 31 oz);
Stain and Odor Remover spray (USA, Simple Solution Company, 92 oz).

Read the application method on the pack of each remedy.

How to clean up a couch from urine in home conditions?

Below, we are considering some popular methods of cleaning upholstered furniture (beds, couches, chairs, stools), namely, how to clean up a couch from the smell of cats, dogs, children, and adults.

How to clean a couch from cat’s urine?

For dark upholstery, use a weak solution of potassium permanganate (having a light pink color), using which, soak thoroughly the spot been pissed and leave it for 5-10 minutes, after which use warm water to wash it off thoroughly.

In order to clean up a couch from urine using folk remedies, for any type of upholstery (bright and dark) use the following options:

Add 3 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to 2 tablespoons of your kitchen detergent (non-aggressive, desirably eco-friendly) and add 2 tablespoons of baking soda. Mix it well to form a paste. Put the paste to the stain and rub it until it nearly dries. In a few hours, remove the completely dried-out substance with a cloth brush or a vacuum cleaner (the second is better).
Dissolve 9% regular vinegar in water 1 to 3 and put on a wet or dry stain in exuberance. Sprinkle baking soda on top and let it dry completely. Apply a cloth brush or a vacuum to remove the residuals.
A lemon juice, natural or dissolved concentrate can be applied although its use is limited to only fresh stains of cat’s urine.

Vinegar and peroxide that you use have to be preliminarily dissolved in water 1:1 or 1:2 (1 or 2 parts of water) in order to prevent your upholstery from losing its color. After everything dries up, you have to very thoroughly clean it from the surface.

How to clean a couch from dog’s urine?

The urine of a dog is cleaned the same as one of a cat and that’s even easier. It must be mentioned that dogs are less prone to be hooligans and marking their territory inside of your house. That can generally happen only accidentally or if an owner forgets to go for a walk with a dog.

How to clean a couch from children’s urine?

The urine of kids is not as aggressive, concentrated, and smelly as the urine of adults – because of the features of their growing body. Its power, though, gets larger with age. The most unaggressive urine is in children of 2 and lesser years. Certainly, you shouldn’t ignore cleaning it immediately after spotting if you don’t want the smell to grow over time.

Cleaning the urine of a 2-year-old child is pretty easy with regular water (warm or cold). For a start, take a paper napkin or toilet paper, fold it in half 2-3 times and dry the spot until the paper isn’t becoming wet anymore. Change the sodden paper until the end of the process – it’s over when the paper is dry. Then put 3-4 layers of the same paper on the place you’ve just dried up and press it with something heavy for a couple of minutes. Then remove all paper and, using a spray bottle filled with clean water, soak the spot thoroughly. Then dry the spot with paper the same as you just did.

If your child is older or is sick (so you give him or her medications, which make their urine smell with odor or unpleasantly ‘chemically’), then to clean the spot, instead of plain water in the process above, use a soft soap water solution. It’s just you will have to wash it off with plain water after spraying the spot before drying it with paper to clean the couch at home conditions. To remove old stains, it’s possible to use lemon juice.

Do not ever use remedies from pet stores to clean the stains of urine of children or to process the childbeds!

How to clean a couch from adult’s urine?

There are few effective ways of removing the urine stains from a couch made by an adult:

Dry cleaning – if the stained surface is big or stains are old and large
Using remedies from stores, which correspond to the type of your upholstery
1:5 water solution of vinegar, which you apply to the stained spot and simply let it dry
Make foam of laundry soap, apply it on the dirty spot, wash it off in 15-20 minutes, and then dry the spot with paper napkins or toilet paper.
Apply 1:2 water solution of lemon juice with a spray bottle on the spot and dry it after 30 minutes with paper, then leave it be until it fully dries naturally.

Couch upholstery, which does not afraid of liquids

If you don’t ever want to face a problem of cleaning your dwelling from urine or odor, you have to pay attention to furniture having water-repellent upholstery:

Monolith
Milos
Grande and others.

Particularly, you can find them on this website: http://arapparel.ua/.

They are all made of 100% polyester, are soft to touch, luxurious in look, and repel liquids (that include urine) thanks to hydrophobic properties. Also, they are wonderful for the HoReCa segment, as they have high resistance to abrasion from 45 K to 100 K cycles in the Martindale scale (very high indicator).

Any liquid that will have been poured on such cloth in a tangent line can simply slip off it to the floor. The one that remained on the surface will take a lot of time to start absorbing, leaving you ample opportunities to dry it off. However, if you haven’t been around when the soaking had happened, you can always try one of the pieces of cleaning advice given above. Also, such cloth is able to protect from other spilled liquids, more banal than urine: tea, wine, coffee, juice, water, biological fluids.

Advice: if you have an opportunity to bring furniture after cleaning to fresh air to let them breathe and gain some natural freshness, then do it.

And one more important thing: do not use bleach, pipe cleaners, and aggressive detergents – they are capable of not only changing the color of your upholstery but even burning through the fabric and damaging the inner parts of your couches, sofas, stools, or chairs not speaking about the negative influence of their evaporated fumes on the health of human and pet dwellers.

How to choose a good sofa

If you need to care for the sofa as a pet or as a man (we have written about it before), then it is necessary to choose it as wine - only for your taste. It is not necessary for everyone to see your sofa who will see or sit on it. The main thing is that it gives you pleasure because it is up to you to "drink" it every day.

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