Mattress stains could be a thing of the past with this handy hack.

Cleaning a mattress is no easy task. Sleeping on them every night is bound to cause marks to appear after a while, whether it's sweat stains from the hot summer nights or spots of blood from a scratch or a period leak.

You can't exactly pick your mattress up and chuck it in the washing machine, so how do you get the stains out? Stain removers can work in a pinch, but spot-treating stains on other fabrics usually involves washing them as normal afterwards, which you can't do with a big bulky mattress.

According to one cleaning fan on social media, there is an easy way to remove mattress stains. All you need is a mixture of three ingredients and one household appliance - your iron.

In a video shared on TikTok by a woman named Ekcho, she explained that she treats her mattress stains by soaking a towel in three common ingredients that you already have in your kitchen cupboards, before wrapping the towel around her iron and using the steam to work the products into her mattress.

She said she takes two tablespoons of baking soda, half a cup of laundry detergent, and half a cup of water, and mixes them before soaking a towel in the mixture. She then wrings out the towel and wraps it around her iron and heats the appliance up.

Ekcho said: "Start scrubbing [with the iron], and the steam is what cleans out the mattress." She then showed the before and after to prove that the iron had really gotten the stains out of her mattress.

In the initial video, Ekcho also said she adds fabric softener to her mixture, but people in the comments warned her not to use the product as it is "basically melted wax" and can leave a residue on your mattress - as well as "ruining" washing machines.

And in response, the woman said she had no idea how "bad" fabric softener was, and said she wouldn't be using it in the future.

Other commenters were blown away by the trick, as many of them said they'd never thought to use an iron to clean their mattress before, but noted that the steam "works wonders" for cleaning.

One person wrote: "I legit needed this and TikTok sent it my way." Another added: "That is awesome."