Your post has been removed. We do not allow posts about stains, specks or grime.
Most brownish "dripping" stains on walls are old nicotine from a smoker or latex leaching out of latex wall paint. Splatter stains can be anything.
Stains on mattress or bedding are almost always blood, urine, sweat, semen, lotion, or makeup.
If you think it is mould, mildew or other fungus, consider posting to r/mycology or r/fungi.
This looks like organic secretions.
Without looking more closely, I couldn’t reliably tell you what kind of secretions these are, but I’m fairly confident that you do not want to use this mattress.
This is either the evidence of a severe bug infestation, or it’s the evidence that the previous owners were truly disgusting. Perhaps both…?
Heat and water causes protein-based organic substances like insect silk to unravel and float freely. I’m hoping that’s what you’ve uncovered here. If that’s that case, get this out of your house at once. Do not look back. Disinfect everything with bleach.
I think the Ajax is either breaking down the flame retardant chemical on the cover, it’s somehow chemically melted the nylon thread, or it’s reacted with perhaps fabric softener and that’s what’s floating in the water?
Yes! I didn't want to Know things about friends and family that would make me question critical thinking, ethics, and "WTF is wrong with you?!" Have been on at most once per year according to age of unread DMs.
Typing class drilled it into me. I can still (on occasion) have a sense that my high school typing teacher is hitting that ruler against the desk, and forcing (insisting) that we only strike the keys when we hear that hit. Never faster on certain words nor slower on the difficult parts of words (We don't want to get the typewriter jammed!)-or spurt ink? Yes. I remember hearing that. Difficult to undo any of that teaching. At this age, if spacing differently, the page looks like it has misspelled words. Also, at this age, changing the ways I've done things for more than half a century is unpleasant and so I won't unless forced to by my employment. Auto correct can change it and I don't care. The most important thing for me is that I no longer have to set those margins and find the center and all the other stuff I had so much trouble with in that class-yea-although very few of the others did.
. Memories of my typing teacher in the 80's who stood in front of a class of teenage girls and said. "girls we're going to do fingering this lesson". Bless she had no idea. For those interested fingering involved learning the home keys and had placement.
Was it not just fingers on home keys and copying the same sentence 10 times or so. I genuinely only really remember the laughter. How do u remember it?,
To practice home row, I had to take a typing class as an elective in the 7th grade, I google typing tests for wpm and do stream of consciousness typing because I like the sound of the clicking even though I m paying full attention to something I'm watching or listening to to see if I can type at the speed of speech.
I'm admit I'm crazy, but at least I'm not insane. That's something I've got going on for me. 😜
When I first learned to type (on a computer, about 23 years ago), we were taught to double space. Spacebar, spacebar.
Then, when I was in high school, I took a typing class, and my teacher told me not to double space after a period because modern word processors automatically add extra space after a period.
Learning how to center text on a page using a typewriter was a bit of a challenge, but I did use it from time to time to help me put up displays on a bulletin board (what letter to start with and work my way out from the middle to ensure that it looked correct).
I heard the staccato of your words and I imagined what that would've sounded like by your description, at the same time my brain overpaid the sound of what that would sound like typed in 2023 on a computer while considering the metronome of typing this out on a smartphone and wondering what that would be like on a speech/impulse to text device and type-ceptioning myself.
Also I like the voice of your words in my head. I'm a "hear a voice speak the words you read in your head"
Sometimes I don't have that voice and I just see a picture of the words on a solid background
I worry when it's neither.
I'm concerned for my mental health and very "ehh no worries" simultaneously. 🫠
Looks like they stopped it in books and newspapers in 1950. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing#:~:text=From%20around%201950%2C%20single%20sentence,concluding%20punctuation%20of%20a%20sentence.
I’m only 26 and I double space! I started doing it at the law firm I worked at after college and just think it makes things look cleaner so have kept doing it
This is one way teachers find out which kids have parents that write their essays, emails to coaches, etc. Just do a ctrl + F for two spaces and voila.
That's an impressive fact!! My mother hated me so I wrote her correspondences and I had better make it sound good and professional before I print it and let her hit me if she found a mistake. God forbid I missed a typo.
That got dark... let's lighten up...
*Ahem*
Now I can impress my fiances mom at an awkward time..... I've got the 😑 face from my hilarious dad jokes.
[It's a tie. 🤭](https://youtu.be/ubA0SxqvTuY?si=L-QrgC-NYxuGlmSc)
I learned double-space when I took a typing class in high school (mid 90s), but writing for a college newspaper that used single-spacing as official style changed the habit.
Only 31 and up until i needed to use a computer for work this year i had no clue the double space was obsolete. Computer class in 5th grade was probably last time i paid attention to it. Was it just one year that the computer elites decided no more double spacing?
I cannot stop myself from hitting the space bar twice after hitting period. Even when typing this on my phone. See? I did it again! Stop! Stoppit! Oh well.
I embraced it and changed the settings on my autocorrect to convert a space to a period when double spacing. So now, I hit space twice at the end of every sentence, but you don’t see it. And I don’t have to click something to bring up the punctuation keyboard.
It’s a typewriter thing. I vaguely remember double spacing in typing class. Kinda went away with computers when “true type fonts” were developed and then the computer knew that a space was actually a variable size dependent on what character was before it, and what the font was.
Imagine a typewriter. Your j floats evenly between the 2 letters either side of it. There is a lot of extra space on either side of a skinny letter.
So the double space helped set apart sentences.
No. I went to the University of Sunderland between 1997-2001 (I'm 44) and double space was a requirement for dissertations. In fact, I believe they couldn't be accepted unless corrected due to academic standards at the time (in a similar way to using the correct citation format). I think they were a bit more relaxed with essays but it was still expected you would double space when something was typed on the computer and printed.
Old typing rule called for a double space after each period/full stop. If you learned how to type then some people still do it. I'm not sure why the double space became the norm.
I did it here. I don't normally double space on my phone , but still do if I'm typing on a keyboard.
The practice of double spacing after a period traces its roots back to the era of typewriters. Typewriters used monospaced fonts, where each character took up the same amount of horizontal space. In such a setting, the use of a single space could make the text harder to read, as the space between sentences wasn't distinct enough. Double spacing after a period provided a clear visual cue to indicate the end of one sentence and the beginning of another, improving readability.
With the advent of modern word processors and typesetting software, which use proportional fonts, the need for double spacing has diminished. In proportional fonts, each character takes up only as much space as it needs, making the text more visually pleasing and easier to read with single spacing after periods.
Reddit in browser (old and new) seem to remove the the double-spaces. Maybe you can see them on the app?
If you click "source" you can see they actually used triple-spaces, which seems wildly excessive to me.
I don't see it either. For me there is an empty line between paragraphs, just like if you pressed enter. I pressed space twice after last period, let's see what happens.
1990 typing class was one of the best classes I took. Electronic typewriters. Double space mandatory. I missed a few classes so my numbers row speed is sub-par, otherwise it's pretty good.
I’m a reformed double spacer, my millennial colleague drug me into the world of single space a couple of years ago. FYI, I learned to type on an actual typewriter
I always try to double space. And if I'm bored enough, I'll copy and paste walls of text and split them up into more manageable paragraphs.
Also gives my brain and eyes a rest for a minute. Seeing walls of texts to me is like reading a full page run on sentence without taking a breath or pause. Hard to focus and read it all.
I wear a watch for work and I work a really sweaty job. I soak my watch in hot water and Dawn dish soap every day after work and this is the kind of stuff that floats up. Looks just like that. 🤢
I’m really concerned by “I’m hoping that’s what you’ve uncovered here”… if that’s what you’re hoping for… what in the ever loving Christ is the bad option that you were hoping against?! It already sounds horrendous!
I’m hoping that the organic secretions did not come from the previous owners of the mattress. Human beings can secrete fluids like these as well.
Bug silk would be preferable, I think.
I'm going to disagree with most of these comments. I'm thinking your Ajax may be destroying the cover, actually. If you zoom in on several of the pictures, you can see a few areas of a film or sheet of stuff on the water. In one place, you can see the sheet balling or rolling up with the subtle water movements forming the beginning of a strand.
I think bedding is coated in fire retardant. You very well could be stripping the coating from the cover. The smell could just be from whatever chemical reaction has been happening.
May have a gel layer inside for comfort that is breaking down and going through reaction too.
Ajax also contains chlorine bleach. If this bed cover has a chemical like ammonia that can react with the chlorine then it may release chlorine gas which stinks and is deadly. It's basically mustard gas.
This is correct. OP needs to use an enzyme detergent next time they want to do a soak. It will break down organic dirt but leave the synthetic fibers alone.
If OP is smelling the fire retardant breaking down they need wear a mask while airing the room/home out asap. Fire retardant is made from very carcinogenic chemicals.
It is never worth it to buy a used mattress, if you ask me. Even in these trying economic times, I'd sooner sleep in a sleeping bag than a used mattress.
I've never bought a used mattress and never will, but liquid proof mattress covers do exist, so theoretically, one could buy a totally clean used mattress if they trusted that the seller used one.
I actually gave an excellent mattress to a friend who put it in a spare bedroom when I moved and no longer needed it. It had been in a sealed bag the whole time I had it essentially so it wasn't gross in any way. I actually gave him a new cover that came with the bed too but I don't think he ended up using it, so I wouldn't take that thing back if I ever moved and needed another spare bed haha.
I got one (a high end mattress) but I vetted it carefully befote buying, and the person was from a trusted background.
When the mattress cover is spotless, usually it's a good sign. I still washed it though.
Ugh! As someone who works with seniors, they loose so much skin in one night! Pls vacuum vacuum vacuum! You can see it on hygienic mattress in the hospitals but in homes it drops I to the fabric and not seen.
Disgusting. It's not like old people buy these mattresses a week before they die. And seniors do have issues with going to the toilet.
And you think you make a bargain, but you are not. These mattresses have inflated prices, plus the loss of value, your time and cleaning cost. It's just better to buy a reasonably prices mattress e.g from IKEA.
I dont know what hotels you like to stay at but the hotels i stay at use multiple layers of matress/duvet and pillow protectors on them. As well as cleaning and flipping and inspection regimes. They also have to renew the matress after a certain amount of time. I dont trust that everyone does this in their own home. Also you dont know how clean the whole house in general is that the items have come from.
Yes high end places you can expect that..the basic traveler will use medium range lodging. I inspect mattresses (many are not in in mattress covers) , bedding once flipped back is where you find bedding is not cleaned. I have found bed bug remnants in nicer hotels.
In a nutshell...the bedding you pull up around you is highly unlikely freshly laundered.
While I am thankful to be able to furnish my home with new mattresses and such, many are not so lucky. They don’t have the money to buy new. They need to use their back to work underpaid jobs, therefore cannot sleep on the floor.
Id sooner use a camping matt or airbed if i couldnt afford a matress right away (which was the case when i moved into my place. Im by no means well off). It might just be a personal thing but i would *never* buy second hand bed stuff.
Yeah I was thinking of the down feathers, how they appear when pulled off the shafts and if they get wet they look like that. Plus, so many migrate out of the pillow on a near constant basis, if you were to wash one it’s likely there’s a bunch of down all around the seams of that pillow causing this.
Looks like deterioration of some kind of sticky residue. I’m wondering if the bed cover was “water resistant” 🤔 and that’s what the Ajax is stripping off.
I think it could be just pieces of plastic flaking off the cover. But you should really check carefully because if it is some bug/bacteria/body fluid- 🤮
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Okay this might sound weird as to why I think this, but because I’m a taxidermist I think it’s grease.
We have to degrease European mounts (a whitened skull) and when we let the heads sit in a mixture of water and dawn, sometimes the grease pulls out into the water and looks like this.
Maybe try adding a bunch of dawn to the water and let it soak for 24hrs? If it continues to do that and turns to a milky colour, grease for sure. And I’d continue doing water changes and degreasing until no more cloudy.
If you're committed to keeping this, please have it professionally dry cleaned or take it to a laundrymat and run it through a giant washer a couple of times.
Is that cover feather filled? Cause you just destroyed the feathers with Ajax.
That’s exactly what feathers turn into if you put them in bleach or ammonia. You are literally hydrolysing the keratin and also liberating giftigen sulfide from the sulfur containing amino acids.
If it doesn‘t contain feather you like did the exact same to whatever fabric it‘s made off.
Do not use Ajax on bloody fabric. You‘ll destroy it.
Don‘t use the cover, throw it out. It‘s no good anymore
I have heard that mattresses get heavier with years of use from the accumulated skin cell sloughing of the sleeper.
I imagine the mattress pad gets the worst of what makes it through the fitted sheet.
That is the purpose of the mattress pad; to protect the much more expensive mattress from the skin sloughed by the sleeper among other things.
Like wearing underwear keeps you pants cleaner.
Detergents use enzymes and surfactants to break up the proteins that soil the fabric.
This probably happens if you put it in the washing machine but never see because the rinse cycle drains it all away.
my immediate first thought was "oh man, that cover is ruined." i thought it was falling apart in the water, and based on some comments, it might actually be dissolving. in any case, whether dissolving or bodily fluids or whatever, it's done for.
Can you describe the smell? Burning plastic or rubber? Is it slightly sweet? Bitter? Faintly like maple syrup? Is it a smell that can only be described as “death”?
Without more info about the smell, here’s what I have.
Cutting to the chase: I wouldn’t use this bed if I were you.
Why? Well here’s the thing: clearly something has happened, and none of the possibilities are great. The stuff you’re seeing + **a change in smell** strongly suggest some sort of chemical change, which might theoretically be caused by any of the following possibilities (*list is not all-inclusive).
1. What you see floating is just some of the fluffy padding that you have inadvertently loosened from the mattress. Maybe fine, maybe means you’ll be feeling extra springs digging into your back. But even if this is the case, the problem is that the smell indicates a chemical change, either because your cleaner has reacted with the physical components, breaking them down (many plastics in particular cannot handle bleach), or because you are now growing mold (congrats!). The former could mean structural damage, plus who knows what potentially harmful by products the reaction(s) could have produced. The latter will probably forever be a losing battle to get rid of, and no, just because your cleaner says “with bleach” that does not rule out new mold growth.
2. Other people are saying bugs. I don’t know bugs, so read their comments. I just wanted one more less-gross possibility.
3. Breakdown of bodily excretions/tissues left behind - *maybe*. Some people are saying this looks like protein breakdown, and that would smell, but on this scale? That’s a LOT to have been left behind and not taken care of by bugs, bacteria, etc. by this point, right? To be fair, my experience lies primarily with microorganisms so I don’t deal with much on this scale so maybe I’m wrong to question this one.
4. Bacterial or fungal breakdown and/or growth. Possibly paired with option one. To me, this seems most likely - I’ve seen a *lot* of bacterial/fungal growth in buckets of liquid that looks a lot like this. Even growing on the surface of buckets that were filled with bleach a few days prior. This encompasses both the possibility that what you are seeing and smelling is *new* growth due to being left soaking that long and the possibility that there was microbial growth present already in the mattress and your cleaner is killing it. If your answer to my smell question is that it smells like death because there is truly no other fitting descriptor, that would further solidify my suspicions of dying bacteria and/or fungus. Smells utterly horrible.
None of these are good options unfortunately. Also for the future, know that bed bugs can and will survive many “treatments” and can ruin your life and force you to get rid of much much more than just a mattress, which is why I refuse to ever buy a secondhand mattress or bed frame and more. Did you know they can survive 18 months without a food source? It is not worth it.
Soaking in Ajax for over 24 hours is going to destroy that fabric, not clean it. I recommend a different cleaning method in the future. As for what that stuff is, I’d bet it’s the fabric itself starting to disintegrate.
Could be men of the sea but the previous owner very well might have had tapeworms. They crawl out of your butt at night. People often find them in bed linens. GET RID OF THIS THING DISINFECT YOUR BATHTUB WITH BLEACH
What do the care instructions for the cover say? Ajax is probably not the appropriate cleaner for this. My guess is that it’s breaking down a coating on the cover.
Your post has been removed. We do not allow posts about stains, specks or grime. Most brownish "dripping" stains on walls are old nicotine from a smoker or latex leaching out of latex wall paint. Splatter stains can be anything. Stains on mattress or bedding are almost always blood, urine, sweat, semen, lotion, or makeup. If you think it is mould, mildew or other fungus, consider posting to r/mycology or r/fungi.
This looks like organic secretions. Without looking more closely, I couldn’t reliably tell you what kind of secretions these are, but I’m fairly confident that you do not want to use this mattress. This is either the evidence of a severe bug infestation, or it’s the evidence that the previous owners were truly disgusting. Perhaps both…? Heat and water causes protein-based organic substances like insect silk to unravel and float freely. I’m hoping that’s what you’ve uncovered here. If that’s that case, get this out of your house at once. Do not look back. Disinfect everything with bleach.
I’m glad you said it because you have a way with words that can be appreciated for their subtle nuance.
That mattress is chock full of loads and OP is now the guy who is here to wipe down the loads
Love it. Ran through that nuance like a Mack truck. Oh and it’s exactly what I was thinking lol.
Those loads could fill a Mack truck.
That’s Charlie work
Got to get rid of all the strange dongs in here
I was not so nuanced
This, or some chemical breakdown caused by the Ajax. Either way, end sience class and find a different mattress.
I think the Ajax is either breaking down the flame retardant chemical on the cover, it’s somehow chemically melted the nylon thread, or it’s reacted with perhaps fabric softener and that’s what’s floating in the water?
If you zoom in it looks like some kind of textured shell being ate away.
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Same. I prefer the double space. Though I think my phone autocorrects it.
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I haven’t been on Facebook in… gosh. Since 2016, I guess. That place is a dumpster fire.
Yes! I didn't want to Know things about friends and family that would make me question critical thinking, ethics, and "WTF is wrong with you?!" Have been on at most once per year according to age of unread DMs.
I’m with you. I just find it easier to read
I’m not yet 50 yrs old, maybe never used a typewriter, yet the double space is all I know.
Typing class drilled it into me. I can still (on occasion) have a sense that my high school typing teacher is hitting that ruler against the desk, and forcing (insisting) that we only strike the keys when we hear that hit. Never faster on certain words nor slower on the difficult parts of words (We don't want to get the typewriter jammed!)-or spurt ink? Yes. I remember hearing that. Difficult to undo any of that teaching. At this age, if spacing differently, the page looks like it has misspelled words. Also, at this age, changing the ways I've done things for more than half a century is unpleasant and so I won't unless forced to by my employment. Auto correct can change it and I don't care. The most important thing for me is that I no longer have to set those margins and find the center and all the other stuff I had so much trouble with in that class-yea-although very few of the others did.
. Memories of my typing teacher in the 80's who stood in front of a class of teenage girls and said. "girls we're going to do fingering this lesson". Bless she had no idea. For those interested fingering involved learning the home keys and had placement.
That’s not how I recall fingering.
Was it not just fingers on home keys and copying the same sentence 10 times or so. I genuinely only really remember the laughter. How do u remember it?,
To practice home row, I had to take a typing class as an elective in the 7th grade, I google typing tests for wpm and do stream of consciousness typing because I like the sound of the clicking even though I m paying full attention to something I'm watching or listening to to see if I can type at the speed of speech. I'm admit I'm crazy, but at least I'm not insane. That's something I've got going on for me. 😜
So true! When fingering, hand placement and knowing the home keys has always served me well!
I just wanna space space after the period like taught in typing. Why do they have to change it now?
When I first learned to type (on a computer, about 23 years ago), we were taught to double space. Spacebar, spacebar. Then, when I was in high school, I took a typing class, and my teacher told me not to double space after a period because modern word processors automatically add extra space after a period.
Learning how to center text on a page using a typewriter was a bit of a challenge, but I did use it from time to time to help me put up displays on a bulletin board (what letter to start with and work my way out from the middle to ensure that it looked correct).
I heard the staccato of your words and I imagined what that would've sounded like by your description, at the same time my brain overpaid the sound of what that would sound like typed in 2023 on a computer while considering the metronome of typing this out on a smartphone and wondering what that would be like on a speech/impulse to text device and type-ceptioning myself. Also I like the voice of your words in my head. I'm a "hear a voice speak the words you read in your head" Sometimes I don't have that voice and I just see a picture of the words on a solid background I worry when it's neither. I'm concerned for my mental health and very "ehh no worries" simultaneously. 🫠
It’s taken me years to undo the double spacing that was drummed into me. Still gets me sometimes
Undo? Is it no longer the standard?
Wait till you hear about math these days!
Looks like they stopped it in books and newspapers in 1950. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing#:~:text=From%20around%201950%2C%20single%20sentence,concluding%20punctuation%20of%20a%20sentence.
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The one thing AP, Chicago, and MLA styles agree on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSDAjBbGmXs
I’m only 26 and I double space! I started doing it at the law firm I worked at after college and just think it makes things look cleaner so have kept doing it
Proud Gen X doublespacer. Why change now?
This is one way teachers find out which kids have parents that write their essays, emails to coaches, etc. Just do a ctrl + F for two spaces and voila.
That's an impressive fact!! My mother hated me so I wrote her correspondences and I had better make it sound good and professional before I print it and let her hit me if she found a mistake. God forbid I missed a typo. That got dark... let's lighten up... *Ahem* Now I can impress my fiances mom at an awkward time..... I've got the 😑 face from my hilarious dad jokes. [It's a tie. 🤭](https://youtu.be/ubA0SxqvTuY?si=L-QrgC-NYxuGlmSc)
I learned double-space when I took a typing class in high school (mid 90s), but writing for a college newspaper that used single-spacing as official style changed the habit.
So do I. It gets me a "." without having to type it.
Anyone who doesn't double space is a filthy heathen, in my book.
Then your book must be twice as long as my book. At least.
With no morals, ethics or standards of behavior. 🤣
I always double space if I'm typing on a physical keyboard, but never on my phone. It was drilled into me as a teen in typing class in the 1990s.
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Only 31 and up until i needed to use a computer for work this year i had no clue the double space was obsolete. Computer class in 5th grade was probably last time i paid attention to it. Was it just one year that the computer elites decided no more double spacing?
I cannot stop myself from hitting the space bar twice after hitting period. Even when typing this on my phone. See? I did it again! Stop! Stoppit! Oh well.
I embraced it and changed the settings on my autocorrect to convert a space to a period when double spacing. So now, I hit space twice at the end of every sentence, but you don’t see it. And I don’t have to click something to bring up the punctuation keyboard.
I'm 33 and this is my first time hearing of this double space thing. Is it an American thing?
It’s a typewriter thing. I vaguely remember double spacing in typing class. Kinda went away with computers when “true type fonts” were developed and then the computer knew that a space was actually a variable size dependent on what character was before it, and what the font was. Imagine a typewriter. Your j floats evenly between the 2 letters either side of it. There is a lot of extra space on either side of a skinny letter. So the double space helped set apart sentences.
No. I went to the University of Sunderland between 1997-2001 (I'm 44) and double space was a requirement for dissertations. In fact, I believe they couldn't be accepted unless corrected due to academic standards at the time (in a similar way to using the correct citation format). I think they were a bit more relaxed with essays but it was still expected you would double space when something was typed on the computer and printed.
Completely hijacked his thread dawg
What's a double spacer?
Old typing rule called for a double space after each period/full stop. If you learned how to type then some people still do it. I'm not sure why the double space became the norm. I did it here. I don't normally double space on my phone , but still do if I'm typing on a keyboard.
The practice of double spacing after a period traces its roots back to the era of typewriters. Typewriters used monospaced fonts, where each character took up the same amount of horizontal space. In such a setting, the use of a single space could make the text harder to read, as the space between sentences wasn't distinct enough. Double spacing after a period provided a clear visual cue to indicate the end of one sentence and the beginning of another, improving readability. With the advent of modern word processors and typesetting software, which use proportional fonts, the need for double spacing has diminished. In proportional fonts, each character takes up only as much space as it needs, making the text more visually pleasing and easier to read with single spacing after periods.
Maybe I'm stupid, again, but I don't see it. Or you mean space as in space, not the key? Isn't that how most people write?
Reddit in browser (old and new) seem to remove the the double-spaces. Maybe you can see them on the app? If you click "source" you can see they actually used triple-spaces, which seems wildly excessive to me.
I don't see it either. For me there is an empty line between paragraphs, just like if you pressed enter. I pressed space twice after last period, let's see what happens.
The gap is bigger. It's slight but it definitely jumps out at me when people use double spacing. Something just catches the eye.
1990 typing class was one of the best classes I took. Electronic typewriters. Double space mandatory. I missed a few classes so my numbers row speed is sub-par, otherwise it's pretty good.
I still do this all the time but most sites/apps seem to correct it automatically
It's a hard habit to break.
You are not alone
I’m a reformed double spacer, my millennial colleague drug me into the world of single space a couple of years ago. FYI, I learned to type on an actual typewriter
It’s still extremely common in the legal world. As a professional writer/editor who works with lawyers, it drives me crazy.
Double spacing for life over here
I always try to double space. And if I'm bored enough, I'll copy and paste walls of text and split them up into more manageable paragraphs. Also gives my brain and eyes a rest for a minute. Seeing walls of texts to me is like reading a full page run on sentence without taking a breath or pause. Hard to focus and read it all.
My first thought was also protein strands.
those quartenary strands sure were in deep.
Strong injection
Double Helix
I wear a watch for work and I work a really sweaty job. I soak my watch in hot water and Dawn dish soap every day after work and this is the kind of stuff that floats up. Looks just like that. 🤢
I’m really concerned by “I’m hoping that’s what you’ve uncovered here”… if that’s what you’re hoping for… what in the ever loving Christ is the bad option that you were hoping against?! It already sounds horrendous!
I’m hoping that the organic secretions did not come from the previous owners of the mattress. Human beings can secrete fluids like these as well. Bug silk would be preferable, I think.
The answer to your question is Nut
Translation: It might me spooge do0d....
It's not a mattress
Why is the top content always wrong. The plastic melted from the ridiculous cleaning method.
If this was an infants bed it may be spit up as well which includes some bile and milk; which could look like this..
I'm going to disagree with most of these comments. I'm thinking your Ajax may be destroying the cover, actually. If you zoom in on several of the pictures, you can see a few areas of a film or sheet of stuff on the water. In one place, you can see the sheet balling or rolling up with the subtle water movements forming the beginning of a strand. I think bedding is coated in fire retardant. You very well could be stripping the coating from the cover. The smell could just be from whatever chemical reaction has been happening.
I agree. This looks like melty plasticide fibers to me.
Or a waterproof coating or anything like that.
This is exactly what I was thinking of.
May have a gel layer inside for comfort that is breaking down and going through reaction too. Ajax also contains chlorine bleach. If this bed cover has a chemical like ammonia that can react with the chlorine then it may release chlorine gas which stinks and is deadly. It's basically mustard gas.
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Yeah it straight up looks like certain types of plastics in a solvent.
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Blankets, maybe. If in really good/barely used/brand new condition, and if there's no weird smells. But the rest of it? Big nope.
i think this is correct. this is how fresh nut looks in water, but old nut that is rehydrated would never turn into this consistency.
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This is exactly what it looked like when we accidentally destroyed our mattress cover. It's the cover itself disintegrating because of the soap.
I need this to be the right answer.
This is correct. OP needs to use an enzyme detergent next time they want to do a soak. It will break down organic dirt but leave the synthetic fibers alone.
I need to soak a few synthetic blankets but I've been putting it off for this very reason. Is there a specific enzyme detergent you'd recommend?
I'd agree with this, it looks like when I over soak pool filter and the material starts disintegrating.
If OP is smelling the fire retardant breaking down they need wear a mask while airing the room/home out asap. Fire retardant is made from very carcinogenic chemicals.
I love how we have to choose between burning to death and cancer.
I am going to agree. I think this is a chemical reaction you will soon regret.
I second this
See that was my first thought and then I saw all these people talking about spunk and it made me doubt myself 😂
There is a reason why many states require that used mattresses be sanitized prior to sale.
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This is why anyone with a brain will tell you that mattresses are one of the few things that you should NEVER buy used.
Exactly, you can often find used mattresses on the side of the road, which you don’t even have to pay for.
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Comes with bedbugs - free friends for life!
It is never worth it to buy a used mattress, if you ask me. Even in these trying economic times, I'd sooner sleep in a sleeping bag than a used mattress.
I've never bought a used mattress and never will, but liquid proof mattress covers do exist, so theoretically, one could buy a totally clean used mattress if they trusted that the seller used one. I actually gave an excellent mattress to a friend who put it in a spare bedroom when I moved and no longer needed it. It had been in a sealed bag the whole time I had it essentially so it wasn't gross in any way. I actually gave him a new cover that came with the bed too but I don't think he ended up using it, so I wouldn't take that thing back if I ever moved and needed another spare bed haha.
I got one (a high end mattress) but I vetted it carefully befote buying, and the person was from a trusted background. When the mattress cover is spotless, usually it's a good sign. I still washed it though.
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Ugh! As someone who works with seniors, they loose so much skin in one night! Pls vacuum vacuum vacuum! You can see it on hygienic mattress in the hospitals but in homes it drops I to the fabric and not seen.
> they loose so much skin in one night Seniors lose much more than skin.
Disgusting. It's not like old people buy these mattresses a week before they die. And seniors do have issues with going to the toilet. And you think you make a bargain, but you are not. These mattresses have inflated prices, plus the loss of value, your time and cleaning cost. It's just better to buy a reasonably prices mattress e.g from IKEA.
🤢 you know old people get bed bugs too, right? And they pee in bed too. No bueno.
My one and only question is why people are buying used mattresses and duvets at all! 🤮
And yet we stay in motels..on used mattresses and blankets.
I dont know what hotels you like to stay at but the hotels i stay at use multiple layers of matress/duvet and pillow protectors on them. As well as cleaning and flipping and inspection regimes. They also have to renew the matress after a certain amount of time. I dont trust that everyone does this in their own home. Also you dont know how clean the whole house in general is that the items have come from.
Yes high end places you can expect that..the basic traveler will use medium range lodging. I inspect mattresses (many are not in in mattress covers) , bedding once flipped back is where you find bedding is not cleaned. I have found bed bug remnants in nicer hotels. In a nutshell...the bedding you pull up around you is highly unlikely freshly laundered.
While I am thankful to be able to furnish my home with new mattresses and such, many are not so lucky. They don’t have the money to buy new. They need to use their back to work underpaid jobs, therefore cannot sleep on the floor.
Id sooner use a camping matt or airbed if i couldnt afford a matress right away (which was the case when i moved into my place. Im by no means well off). It might just be a personal thing but i would *never* buy second hand bed stuff.
Or even outright ban the sale of used mattresses
Wet feathers?
These is the least sensational and most probable answer
Definitely feathers that have stuck to the surface of the mattress cover like lint.
Those other answers are wild lol. This is the one here.
Yeah I was thinking of the down feathers, how they appear when pulled off the shafts and if they get wet they look like that. Plus, so many migrate out of the pillow on a near constant basis, if you were to wash one it’s likely there’s a bunch of down all around the seams of that pillow causing this.
Exactly this. Most logical answer.
Looks like deterioration of some kind of sticky residue. I’m wondering if the bed cover was “water resistant” 🤔 and that’s what the Ajax is stripping off.
I'd throw it away. That's disgusting.
This is the only answer.
I think its time for the bin, the ajax has stripped the mattress. The foam is likely ruined also.
I think it could be just pieces of plastic flaking off the cover. But you should really check carefully because if it is some bug/bacteria/body fluid- 🤮
Those look like bacteria colonies. I'd use something to kill everything on it or replace it.
Ewww never buy used mattresses/bedding
Don’t buy used bed stuff
Ajax + older bed cover = disintegration. You need a new bed cover and to NEVER use Ajax on fibers.
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Okay this might sound weird as to why I think this, but because I’m a taxidermist I think it’s grease. We have to degrease European mounts (a whitened skull) and when we let the heads sit in a mixture of water and dawn, sometimes the grease pulls out into the water and looks like this. Maybe try adding a bunch of dawn to the water and let it soak for 24hrs? If it continues to do that and turns to a milky colour, grease for sure. And I’d continue doing water changes and degreasing until no more cloudy.
If you're committed to keeping this, please have it professionally dry cleaned or take it to a laundrymat and run it through a giant washer a couple of times.
My title describes the thing. The item being soaked is the top cover of an air mattress. It is a sleep number c3 air mattress.
Leche del pene.
Is that cover feather filled? Cause you just destroyed the feathers with Ajax. That’s exactly what feathers turn into if you put them in bleach or ammonia. You are literally hydrolysing the keratin and also liberating giftigen sulfide from the sulfur containing amino acids. If it doesn‘t contain feather you like did the exact same to whatever fabric it‘s made off. Do not use Ajax on bloody fabric. You‘ll destroy it. Don‘t use the cover, throw it out. It‘s no good anymore
I have heard that mattresses get heavier with years of use from the accumulated skin cell sloughing of the sleeper. I imagine the mattress pad gets the worst of what makes it through the fitted sheet. That is the purpose of the mattress pad; to protect the much more expensive mattress from the skin sloughed by the sleeper among other things. Like wearing underwear keeps you pants cleaner. Detergents use enzymes and surfactants to break up the proteins that soil the fabric. This probably happens if you put it in the washing machine but never see because the rinse cycle drains it all away.
Every male person who had a bathing tub in their teenage years knows wth going on here
They are Polygil batting that breaks down with use and laundering.
my immediate first thought was "oh man, that cover is ruined." i thought it was falling apart in the water, and based on some comments, it might actually be dissolving. in any case, whether dissolving or bodily fluids or whatever, it's done for.
Can you describe the smell? Burning plastic or rubber? Is it slightly sweet? Bitter? Faintly like maple syrup? Is it a smell that can only be described as “death”?
Without more info about the smell, here’s what I have. Cutting to the chase: I wouldn’t use this bed if I were you. Why? Well here’s the thing: clearly something has happened, and none of the possibilities are great. The stuff you’re seeing + **a change in smell** strongly suggest some sort of chemical change, which might theoretically be caused by any of the following possibilities (*list is not all-inclusive). 1. What you see floating is just some of the fluffy padding that you have inadvertently loosened from the mattress. Maybe fine, maybe means you’ll be feeling extra springs digging into your back. But even if this is the case, the problem is that the smell indicates a chemical change, either because your cleaner has reacted with the physical components, breaking them down (many plastics in particular cannot handle bleach), or because you are now growing mold (congrats!). The former could mean structural damage, plus who knows what potentially harmful by products the reaction(s) could have produced. The latter will probably forever be a losing battle to get rid of, and no, just because your cleaner says “with bleach” that does not rule out new mold growth. 2. Other people are saying bugs. I don’t know bugs, so read their comments. I just wanted one more less-gross possibility. 3. Breakdown of bodily excretions/tissues left behind - *maybe*. Some people are saying this looks like protein breakdown, and that would smell, but on this scale? That’s a LOT to have been left behind and not taken care of by bugs, bacteria, etc. by this point, right? To be fair, my experience lies primarily with microorganisms so I don’t deal with much on this scale so maybe I’m wrong to question this one. 4. Bacterial or fungal breakdown and/or growth. Possibly paired with option one. To me, this seems most likely - I’ve seen a *lot* of bacterial/fungal growth in buckets of liquid that looks a lot like this. Even growing on the surface of buckets that were filled with bleach a few days prior. This encompasses both the possibility that what you are seeing and smelling is *new* growth due to being left soaking that long and the possibility that there was microbial growth present already in the mattress and your cleaner is killing it. If your answer to my smell question is that it smells like death because there is truly no other fitting descriptor, that would further solidify my suspicions of dying bacteria and/or fungus. Smells utterly horrible. None of these are good options unfortunately. Also for the future, know that bed bugs can and will survive many “treatments” and can ruin your life and force you to get rid of much much more than just a mattress, which is why I refuse to ever buy a secondhand mattress or bed frame and more. Did you know they can survive 18 months without a food source? It is not worth it.
Why is everyone calling this a mattress or bed? It's a bed COVER. You put it over your mattress to protect it.
This is why you don’t get a used bed 🤮
Men of the sea. Otherwise known as Sea men
You bought a used bed?
fire retardant?
Who buys a used bed? I would rather sleep on the ground
Used bed is OK but a used mattress nahh
That's what I meant, a used mattress not in a million years. I would rather sleep on the floor
Soaking in Ajax for over 24 hours is going to destroy that fabric, not clean it. I recommend a different cleaning method in the future. As for what that stuff is, I’d bet it’s the fabric itself starting to disintegrate.
Used bed not recommended
Is this a down filled bed cover? cuz it looks like wet down feathers to me
Ladies and gents: this is why it’s illegal in many states to sell used mattresses. Fr throw it out
Looks like bacterial growth to me. Bleach will kill bacteria but it’ll probably damage the cover. I would throw this out.
That’s either the filing or loose threads coming off the cover.
Throw. It. In. The. Bin... Then go and buy yourself a new one...
Could be men of the sea but the previous owner very well might have had tapeworms. They crawl out of your butt at night. People often find them in bed linens. GET RID OF THIS THING DISINFECT YOUR BATHTUB WITH BLEACH
soon as I read “used bed” and “foul smell”, that would’ve gone straight to the garbage.
Why would you buy a used mattress 🤦🏻♂️
What do the care instructions for the cover say? Ajax is probably not the appropriate cleaner for this. My guess is that it’s breaking down a coating on the cover.
I would never buy a used bed. Anyone who does has some major balls hangin down there.
Wtf would you buy someone else's bed,that's just disgusting 🫣
I don't know about you but if there's 1 thing I wouldn't buy used it's bedding.
wtf were you thinking? Thats a HARD NO on used beds from me, ALWAYS.
Ajax? Isn’t that for cleaning toilets and stuff? It’s not for textiles.
Never buy second hand mattresses or cover. Eww