You cannot sterilize a mattress, and nobody honest will sell you a product that does. What works is removal and dryness: strip the bed, wash everything at the hottest setting its care label allows, dry it completely, vacuum the mattress top, sides and seams, zip it into an encasement, and keep the bedroom dry.
That is a housekeeping answer, not a medical one. You will not find a magic temperature or a percentage here: we claim nothing kills anything, and what your symptoms respond to is a conversation with your doctor. What can honestly be claimed is the physical half — what leaves the fabric and ends up in the vacuum is no longer on the bed — and in Miami that half is mostly a question of moisture.
Why the question is different here
Almost every guide that surfaces for this query was written for a house with a dry winter. There is no dry winter here. Humidity, salt air and year-round pollen mean buildup happens faster than in drier climates — that is how our deep cleaning page describes it — and a bedroom’s fabric is where it shows, because it is the one surface in the house you lie against for eight hours at a stretch.
The local calendar runs opposite to the one those guides assume, too. The cooler, drier months — roughly November through April — are exactly when people here open the windows; hurricane season, June through November, is when the house gets sealed and the air conditioning carries everything. And when the power goes out, the house sits at whatever the outdoor air is doing until it comes back: if the bed spent two days like that, those linens go back through the wash and, above all, through a full dry.
“In a humid climate, the thermostat does more for a bedroom than any spray bottle.”
The five steps, in order
None of this is a hack. It is simply the order that keeps one step from undoing the one before it.
- Strip everything, and carry it — Sheets, pillowcases, the mattress protector, the pillow protectors, the blanket at the foot of the bed. Carry the pile to the machine instead of shaking it out in the room — whatever leaves the fabric mid-air lands back on the bed you are about to remake.
- Wash to the label, not to a number online — The care label is the ceiling and the only honest source for a given fabric. Wash at the hottest setting that label allows; anything that cannot take it — a wool topper, a down duvet, a dry-clean-only sham — is a piece of bedding you may simply want to replace with one you can wash weekly.
- Dry it completely — the Miami step — Bedding that comes out cool and faintly damp has not finished. Two smaller loads dry better than one packed drum, and a condo stackable is the single most common reason a duvet cover comes out still heavy. Line-drying outdoors in August puts it back into humid air, so the dryer usually wins here.
- Vacuum the mattress, slowly — Top, both sides, the seam piping where dust collects, the headboard, the platform or box spring, and the floor underneath. Slow overlapping passes lift more than fast ones. A vacuum removes what it lifts — that is the whole claim, and it is enough.
- Encase it, then keep the room dry — A zippered encasement is a barrier — a physical claim, not a chemical one — and it washes on the same rhythm as the sheets. After that the lever is moisture: an air conditioner pulls water out of the air as it cools, so the setting you leave on the thermostat is doing more for the bedroom than any spray on the shelf.
Drying is the step people skip
In a dry house, the wash is the important step and drying is a formality. Here it is the other way around: bed linens and towels are the heaviest things that go through a dryer, and a packed condo stackable hands them back warm and half-done. Split it into two loads. If your building has a shared laundry room, count the walk and the wait before you start at nine at night — and if you cannot finish the dry, it is better to wash tomorrow.
The moment the bed is stripped is the moment to vacuum: mattress, base, headboard and the floor underneath, all in one pass of work. Then encase it and remake it. The full routine for the rest of the house — top-down, barely damp microfiber, floors last — lives in how to clean your house to reduce allergens.
What we will not tell you works
Baking soda, “anti-mite” sprays, dragging the mattress into the sun, putting pillows in the freezer: we make no claim about any of it. A cleaning company is in no position to tell you what kills what, and the label on a product is the only honest source for what that product does. What is verifiable is mechanical: what you sprinkle you have to vacuum back out, what you spray leaves the mattress damp, and in August a mattress on a balcony comes back with more humidity and more pollen than it left with. If you live in a tower, check your association’s rules before anything goes over the railing, too.
And an honest answer to the other half of the question: you will never see them, nobody diagnoses them from a photo, and JAS does not test mattresses and would not sell you that service. What is observable is domestic — how long since the bedding was washed, whether it finishes drying, whether the room feels damp, whether the mattress has a protector on it.
What a JAS visit does with your bed — and what it does not
A residential clean is the maintenance routine: kitchen and bath reset, floors mopped and vacuumed, surfaces dusted, linens straightened, trash out. That is 28 items verified by photo, on a 2–3 hour visit with a 2-person team, starting at $225; on eligible completed visits, your CleanCheck Report includes checklist status and customer-safe photos. The Standard tier’s own inclusion list says it in those words: beds made with existing linens.
Making a bed is not washing it, and the page is just as plain about the other side: laundry, organization, patios, garages & specialty work sit on the Standard tier’s exclusion list. Washing is its own priced line — laundry wash, dry & fold from $30 per load, “per on-site load; working machines required”, and a bed linen change at $18 per bed, which is used linens removed and each bed made with the fresh linens provided. That machines clause matters in a building: if the laundry is a floor down rather than inside your unit, say so at booking. The full breakdown is in do house cleaners do laundry?
Two more details that matter in a bedroom. We bring everything — eco-friendly products by default and fragrance-free on request — and if you would rather we use a specific product or your own vacuum, leave a note on your booking and we follow it; in a room that is fabric on every side, that note gets used more than any other. And the floor under the furniture, bed included, belongs to the deep clean: reachable areas under furniture, on a 4–6 hour visit starting at $375. What does not exist in our catalog is a mattress-cleaning, upholstery, steam or sanitizing line — we do not publish one because we do not offer one. If a home has an infestation, that is pest control: our Terms reserve the right to refuse or stop service where conditions are unsafe for our team — mold, infestation, biohazards, or abusive behavior.
Frequency beats intensity
One whole afternoon spent on the bedroom returns less than washing the bedding every week for three months. It is the same logic as the rest of the house: every two weeks is the rhythm most Miami homes settle into, and HomeCare is built for customers planning at least 3 cleanings — weekly saves 15%, every two weeks saves 10%, and every four weeks uses the Standard rate. None of that changes what your own washer does; it changes whether the room reaches the weekend with dust sitting on it.
Quick answers
Does baking soda on a mattress get rid of dust mites?
We make no claim about what baking soda or any other product does — the label on the product is the only honest source for that. What we can tell you is mechanical: anything you sprinkle on a mattress you then have to vacuum back out of it, and anything you spray on one leaves it damp, which in this climate is a step backwards. JAS sells no dust-mite treatment and does not offer one.
How do I know if my mattress has dust mites?
You cannot see them, nobody can tell you from a photo, and a cleaning company cannot test for them — JAS does not, and would not sell you the answer. If the reason you are asking is symptoms, that is a conversation with a doctor. What you can observe is the housekeeping half: how long since the bedding was washed, whether it dries all the way, whether the room feels damp, and whether there is a protector on the mattress at all.
Does a JAS cleaning include washing the sheets?
The Standard clean includes beds made with existing linens; laundry sits on the published exclusions list and is a separately priced line — laundry wash, dry & fold from $30 per load, per on-site load, working machines required, and a bed linen change at $18 per bed. Add either in the booking flow and you see the quote before you confirm.
Do you steam-clean or sanitize mattresses?
No. There is no mattress-cleaning, upholstery, steam or sanitizing line in what we publish, so there is none to book. What a visit does around the bed is dusting and vacuuming, plus the floor under the furniture on a deep clean. If a home has an infestation, that is a job for pest control — our Terms reserve the right to refuse or stop service where conditions are unsafe for our team.
How often should bedding be washed in Miami?
Weekly is the rhythm to actually put on the calendar, with the protector and encasement going through on a slower loop and the mattress vacuumed whenever the bed is stripped anyway. It is the same principle the rest of the house runs on: every two weeks is the cadence most Miami homes settle into, because frequency beats intensity in a climate where nothing ever gets a dry month off.
The short version
Strip, wash to the label, dry completely, vacuum the mattress while it is bare, encase it, and keep the room dry. Repeat weekly. In Miami the decisive step is not the wash but the dry and the air conditioning, because humidity is the one item on the list that no cloth removes. And nobody — us included — should be selling you a promise about what lives inside a mattress.
This guide is part of the JAS operating playbook — written to answer in public a question the category usually answers with something to sell you.