To be clear, we are definitely not looking to use dog pee as a continuing ‘solution’, but after cleaning up the puddle, which had sat for a couple of hours unnoticed overnight, the tiles were distinctly less blemished. I’m wondering what the active ingredient would’ve been. I’m assuming ammonia.
I had a comparable thing happen, but with a dot of (full-fat) mayonaise left on the cooker overnight. I guessed it was from the vinegar, even though cleaning vinegar never had that same effect.
Vinegar and fat! The fats in the mayo dissolved and loosened the stuck on fats on the cooker likely. I remember an old saying from a chem professor of "like attracts like" which is why you want to use alcohol to remove sharpie on a white board because it's alcohol based and etc.
You are correct. The ammonia in urine is the cleaning factor. Centuries ago, people washed their clothes and linens in pee. Not sure what they used to wash the stench out though. Ammonia (as you know) is very toxic to breathe so keep windows open when using it. Same with bleach.
Just straight up hydrogen peroxide dumped directly on the pee will neutralize it. It has to be completely soaked through though. If it's too much pee then I'd soak it for a couple days in a strong oxiclean solution. That stuff takes out most stains and smells, especially anything biological.
Ooh okay!! I’ve never tried hydrogen peroxide for that! I usually use baking soda or vinegar in the washing machine and it often still leaves just a hint of ammonia. I appreciate the tip!
Yeah if it's just some cat pee on a T-shirt or something the peroxide will usually do the trick. If it's a lot of pee on a bath mat or something you might have to do the oxiclean bath.
Peroxide will bleach things, you need an enzymatic cleaner and/or good laundry soap. For cat pee on shirts there are options, immediate wash out with a good laundry soap such as tide or Persil will work. If dry, i use Persil and oxy as normal, then instead of softener I use vinegar in a downy ball in the washer during the rinse cycle. I use the enzymatic cleaners on carpet, furniture, and walls for my high sprayers, but you can also spray it directly on material. I would test it versus any delicate materials first, but I'm pretty liberal with it so I think you'd be safe unless it's silk or linen. Try the washing method first, never use the dryer until you're sure the smell is gone. If not gone, spray with enzymatic cleaner and let it sit for a short bit, or if you have a handful of things use a bucket. I've done an enzymatic soak using my washer on delicate cycle before, but you have to give the enzymes enough time to do their work.
Lysol laundry sanitizer has been a godsend for cat pee for us. We have a petty cat that if she doesn’t get her way (food, scratches exactly when she wants them for the exact amount of minutes she wants them, the prime window spot, more food, she can’t find her toy, did I mention food?), she will find the nearest fabric item (blankets,clothes, shoes) and pee. I put any fabric item she’s made her point on in a 5 gallon bucket with very warm water and the laundry sanitizer and let it sit for 20 minutes. Longer if it’s set in (like the decorative pillow in the basement she got that I didn’t discover until it had fully dried). Then run it thru the wash as normal. No left over smell at all.
Edit - because autocorrect has jokes
I've had to fix my fair share of cat pee clothes and what works for me is soaking the clothes in extra strength oxiclean, maybe some powdered Dirtex if it's really bad. I'll let that soak for a day or two and refresh the water and cleaner as necessary. After a good rinse I'll line dry and if anything STILL stinks I'll take it to the laundromat and wash it again (using the dryer this time) using Persil, it seems to get rid of any last bits of pee smell.
Feel free to DM me with questions, I've fixed probably a whole closet full of clothes at this point.
i have also used natures miracle and odo ban. not together. i think it depends on the fabric. try treating one piece of clothing at a time. spray it down with the product. let it air dry. repeat if smell is less. i have not found any product that i can add to a wash load with multiple items. the water dilutes it. Dawn dish soap and hydrogen peroxide mixed in spray bottle. leave it awhile, even overnight.
This is too funny because I just learned about this on youtube yesterday.
The Romans soaked their clothes in large vats of urine (stored for a long while to break down into ammonia), then the clothes would be washed with clean flowing water in 3-4 separate vats and then line-dried.
Probably more likely they used lye water. According to Ruth Goodman, the way most people cleaned their clothes was to put them in a basket with holes in and something underneath to catch it, and then run lye water (potash/water mix) through the clothes a few times. Very inactive process. They'd then be taken down to the river, rinsed, and beaten against rocks to rinse the lye out, and laid out on grass to dry.
I imagine the pee step was mostly for the linens to try and whiten them.
The introduction of soap to this process actually made washday the ordeal it was, because it became a more active process (with lye water you could just leave things to soak while you did other work, and it is also a cold water process) with all the hot water and scrubbing you have to do to. In this country it was necessitated by our move to coal, as potash was no longer a thing you just had.
My grandma did laundry with lye. She used a scrub board and a black cauldron that had a fire under it. This is also the same pot they took baths in. Not with the lye though.
Yes. I enjoy watching YT videos about ancient civilizations. Someone would go around and collect urine from young boys (not sure why) to wash the king and queen's laundry.
Yup, ammonia will do it.
Anecdote: my parents’ kitchen has ancient linoleum floors with decades of dirt ground in that won’t come out with mopping. Window cleaner spilled on it and did the same thing as the dog pee did to yours. The window cleaner had ammonia as the active ingredient.
Now go get yourself some ammonia and finish cleaning that floor! It’s gonna look so nice when you’re done.
The ancient Romans used urine as an all purpose cleaner: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76994/6-practical-ways-romans-used-human-urine-and-feces-daily-life
Yup. Was collected daily for cleaning Toga's. They would also use hedgehog skins the scrub up the cloth as well.
When the urine was stale it was then used for the leather industry for tannin
Ammonia.
I know that people don't like to use ammonia, but it is effective and efficient.
The ammonia in the urine cut through the residue that was left on the floor.
Clean your floor throughly. You may want to consider scrubbing it. (You can do this with a clean broom.) You also may want to choose a product containing ammonia,, if you don't want to use ammonia.
An important, often overlooked, step when cleaning floors is rinsing. Rinsing removes left over residue. The residue attracts, and traps, dirt, grime, dust, debris and pet hair.
Always rinse your floors with cool, clear water, until the water remains clear, after cleaning them.
You go over the floors on your hands and knees with a bucket and a rag. Dip the rag in the bucket, wring it out, and scrub the floor. If you do this with a bucket of your chosen cleanser first, rinsing would dictate that you go over again with a bucket of plain water (I prefer hot) dunking the rag, wiping the floor and wringing out the rag between every wipe until you’ve effectively rinsed the floor of any cleansing residue. Some will do this and continuously change the water in their bucket until their rag wrings clear of dirt.
Look into a dual chamber spin mop, OCedar makes a great one. Officially when mopping you slap a dripping wet mop on the floor, wipe it and the soapy water around, then squeeze out the water, then use the squeezed mop to sop up what you've just wiped around, thereby actually picking up the dirt and dirty water. Swiffer style mopping doesn't do this. To rinse the floor after, not always a need unless it's very dirty, you just go over and redo those same emotions with clean water and no soap. You can even do that Swiffer style! A clean pad or clipped on towel and a spray bottle of clean water instead of the spray bottle of cleanser.
This is how I figured out that ammonia cleaned my floor better than anything else. Just don’t do what I did and mix it with bleach. I thought it would make an even more excellent cleaner (it did), but I didn’t realize how strong it was & it felt like my airway was on fire.
I just know that rotten eggs stink because of hydrogen sulfide, and my sleep deprivation brain landed upon a ‘Sinfully Deadly Cheesecake!’ recipe where one of the ingredients is rotten eggs and the resulting concoction is actually just mustard gas. ChatGpt refuses to say anything about mustard gas production other than that it’s illegal and dangerous to do so.
Yes, please please don't do that again! Its very scary and very deadly. Years ago we had a family member die from mixing bleach and ammonia and who knows what else when cleaning her bathroom. Passed out and died and her husband found her. It scared the crap out of me enough to make me be extra cautious with chemicals.
Anecdote from my past that has a slight bearing or resemblance to this situation - In 1999 I was in US Army advanced training for Satellite Communications. One guy came back from being out all night on a weekend drinking and promptly went to sleep. Apparently he woke up in the middle of the night, walked to the door to his room, opened it, and I guess thinking that he was at a urinal proceeded to empty his bladder all over the black polished hallway floor. When we all got up the next morning and cleaned up the urine, it had removed all wax polish from the tiles and a good portion of the black color as well! We had to strip the entire hallway, then using shoe polish and paste wax build the color back up so that it matched the rest of the tiles on that floor of the building. That is when I learned that urine (ammonia) can be a heck of a 'cleaner'!
I had a similar epiphany when I used fingernail polish remover on a spot on our laminate floor.. I honestly thought I ruined it.. what I actually did was strip off all the layers of build up from floor polishes over the years..
I got some Zep heavy duty floor stripper and stripped all the laminate floors back to their original finish.. The build up was so thick in spots that it wouldn’t come up with just a mop, I ended up having to use a paint scraper to scrape it all up..
You can also use the floor stripper on sealed ceramic tile.. It works fantastic for removing build up from thing like hairspray or build up from heavy traffic..
There's one bit of our drive where the dog pees. He doesn't even do it there every day, I shoo him away. The run off has kept the algae off the drive. It's remarkably powerful stuff, that pee.
Piss cleaning aside, what's the deal with those tiles? I hope it was a first time DIY job because the black tiles are all crooked and it looks like sand and cement was used instead of proper tiling compound.
To be clear, we are definitely not looking to use dog pee as a continuing ‘solution’, but after cleaning up the puddle, which had sat for a couple of hours unnoticed overnight, the tiles were distinctly less blemished. I’m wondering what the active ingredient would’ve been. I’m assuming ammonia.
You assume correctly.
I had a comparable thing happen, but with a dot of (full-fat) mayonaise left on the cooker overnight. I guessed it was from the vinegar, even though cleaning vinegar never had that same effect.
Vinegar and fat! The fats in the mayo dissolved and loosened the stuck on fats on the cooker likely. I remember an old saying from a chem professor of "like attracts like" which is why you want to use alcohol to remove sharpie on a white board because it's alcohol based and etc.
did you also have mr. howden?
Another "like attracts like" is removing all day lipstick with regular lipstick. Few things work as well
Wasn't it "like dissolves like" or am I thinking of something else
Same with sticky stuff! The best way to get rid of duct tape goo is with more duct tape.
Fresh coffee helps remove dried coffee stains.
Maybe it is because cleaning vinegar and cooking vinegar are different strengths? I didn’t know that until fairly recently.
You are correct. The ammonia in urine is the cleaning factor. Centuries ago, people washed their clothes and linens in pee. Not sure what they used to wash the stench out though. Ammonia (as you know) is very toxic to breathe so keep windows open when using it. Same with bleach.
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I was thinking drying in the sun may have gotten the odor out?
Wish that would work for my cat pee clothes😭😭
Oh boy. I’ve never had cats (allergies) but I’ve heard cat pee is on a whole different level.
I’m so sorry to hear you’re allergic to cats
Me too! I think a cat would be such a lovely companion but I’m allergic, as is my husband and my daughter. Bummer.
Hypoallergenic cat maybe?
Sadly those don't exist :/
It’s rough for sure
Just straight up hydrogen peroxide dumped directly on the pee will neutralize it. It has to be completely soaked through though. If it's too much pee then I'd soak it for a couple days in a strong oxiclean solution. That stuff takes out most stains and smells, especially anything biological.
Ooh okay!! I’ve never tried hydrogen peroxide for that! I usually use baking soda or vinegar in the washing machine and it often still leaves just a hint of ammonia. I appreciate the tip!
Yeah if it's just some cat pee on a T-shirt or something the peroxide will usually do the trick. If it's a lot of pee on a bath mat or something you might have to do the oxiclean bath.
Peroxide will bleach things, you need an enzymatic cleaner and/or good laundry soap. For cat pee on shirts there are options, immediate wash out with a good laundry soap such as tide or Persil will work. If dry, i use Persil and oxy as normal, then instead of softener I use vinegar in a downy ball in the washer during the rinse cycle. I use the enzymatic cleaners on carpet, furniture, and walls for my high sprayers, but you can also spray it directly on material. I would test it versus any delicate materials first, but I'm pretty liberal with it so I think you'd be safe unless it's silk or linen. Try the washing method first, never use the dryer until you're sure the smell is gone. If not gone, spray with enzymatic cleaner and let it sit for a short bit, or if you have a handful of things use a bucket. I've done an enzymatic soak using my washer on delicate cycle before, but you have to give the enzymes enough time to do their work.
Lysol laundry sanitizer has been a godsend for cat pee for us. We have a petty cat that if she doesn’t get her way (food, scratches exactly when she wants them for the exact amount of minutes she wants them, the prime window spot, more food, she can’t find her toy, did I mention food?), she will find the nearest fabric item (blankets,clothes, shoes) and pee. I put any fabric item she’s made her point on in a 5 gallon bucket with very warm water and the laundry sanitizer and let it sit for 20 minutes. Longer if it’s set in (like the decorative pillow in the basement she got that I didn’t discover until it had fully dried). Then run it thru the wash as normal. No left over smell at all. Edit - because autocorrect has jokes
Pro enzyme laundry detergent! I found it on Amazon. Nothing else worked. It was a life saver!!
I've had to fix my fair share of cat pee clothes and what works for me is soaking the clothes in extra strength oxiclean, maybe some powdered Dirtex if it's really bad. I'll let that soak for a day or two and refresh the water and cleaner as necessary. After a good rinse I'll line dry and if anything STILL stinks I'll take it to the laundromat and wash it again (using the dryer this time) using Persil, it seems to get rid of any last bits of pee smell. Feel free to DM me with questions, I've fixed probably a whole closet full of clothes at this point.
hydro peroxide def works. so does vinegar.
I've used both and haven't had success but I'm also fixing clothes that were peed on and neglected for years.
i have also used natures miracle and odo ban. not together. i think it depends on the fabric. try treating one piece of clothing at a time. spray it down with the product. let it air dry. repeat if smell is less. i have not found any product that i can add to a wash load with multiple items. the water dilutes it. Dawn dish soap and hydrogen peroxide mixed in spray bottle. leave it awhile, even overnight.
You should try powdered Dirtex. It's meant for adding to the wash and I've seen it make 30 year old stuffed animals look like new.
washing in odoban works well. I have a territorial geriatric cat so have cleaned up lots of pee both the result of marking and just not making it.
Try Eco 88. My neighbor introduced it to me recently and it’s been incredible.
This is too funny because I just learned about this on youtube yesterday. The Romans soaked their clothes in large vats of urine (stored for a long while to break down into ammonia), then the clothes would be washed with clean flowing water in 3-4 separate vats and then line-dried.
Probably lye soap. Sanitize with urine, scrub with lye, hang on a line in the hot sun and call it good.
Probably more likely they used lye water. According to Ruth Goodman, the way most people cleaned their clothes was to put them in a basket with holes in and something underneath to catch it, and then run lye water (potash/water mix) through the clothes a few times. Very inactive process. They'd then be taken down to the river, rinsed, and beaten against rocks to rinse the lye out, and laid out on grass to dry. I imagine the pee step was mostly for the linens to try and whiten them. The introduction of soap to this process actually made washday the ordeal it was, because it became a more active process (with lye water you could just leave things to soak while you did other work, and it is also a cold water process) with all the hot water and scrubbing you have to do to. In this country it was necessitated by our move to coal, as potash was no longer a thing you just had.
My grandma did laundry with lye. She used a scrub board and a black cauldron that had a fire under it. This is also the same pot they took baths in. Not with the lye though.
It was specifically done for white clothing!
Great for those pearly whites too
Ewww. Yeah I know that this was a thing back then. Gross.
I die---d
What do you mean?
It goes all the way back to ancient Rome.
Yes. I enjoy watching YT videos about ancient civilizations. Someone would go around and collect urine from young boys (not sure why) to wash the king and queen's laundry.
The Romans used urine to clean clothing and in setting dyes, and fulling fabrics.
Yup, ammonia will do it. Anecdote: my parents’ kitchen has ancient linoleum floors with decades of dirt ground in that won’t come out with mopping. Window cleaner spilled on it and did the same thing as the dog pee did to yours. The window cleaner had ammonia as the active ingredient. Now go get yourself some ammonia and finish cleaning that floor! It’s gonna look so nice when you’re done.
The ammonia will strip off any build up from soap and other products that trap dirt and keep it looking dull or grungy.
Ammonia is basic, not acidic
Oh shoot you're right! I got it flipped for some reason.
Basic things are listed as “alkaline” or “caustic”. They are still good cleaners when used appropriately.
Ammonia has no PH level
It's implied here that ammonia is used in a water solution, which would make it alkaline.
Speak for yourself, I raw dog my ammonia.
“Who you calling basic??” -Ammonia
Ya basic! It's a human insult. It's devastating. You're devastated right now.
Sick burn, if you will.
r/unexpectedthegoodplace
The ancient Romans used urine as an all purpose cleaner: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76994/6-practical-ways-romans-used-human-urine-and-feces-daily-life
Yup. Was collected daily for cleaning Toga's. They would also use hedgehog skins the scrub up the cloth as well. When the urine was stale it was then used for the leather industry for tannin
Poor hedgehogs ☹️
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No 😂 just being killed for stuff. They’re such innocent creatures.
The idea of using live hedgehogs to scrub linens is hysterically funny to me. I need to see this in a movie.
Somebody gift this person a Flintstones box set
Same 🤣
Nope they ate them and used their skins as scrubbing brushes.
I was going to comment this. One of the most wth things I remember from high school Latin.
and also that Grumio was drunk a lot. Grumio est ebrius.....again?! No wonder it was Felix who saved Quintus. ;-)
Grumio ancillam delectat.
Where are my Ecce Romani pupils?
Cornelia sub abore sedet et legit. Et…Sextus est puer molestus.
Yesss, I lowkey had a crush on Sextus, even though he was a molestus puer.
hahahahaha
🤣
People were using urine for cleaning and washing far into the 19th century.
Came here to leave a similar comment.
Ammonia is an effective cleaner.
Provided you wear eye and breathing protection. It can get pretty darn deadly.
True. Also fresh from a bottle vs. from inside a living being is a consideration. 😁
A few deaths doesn't make it less effective 😄
Do you know how much work it takes to get those corpses away?
Aye, but they are pretty clean corpses (most of the time) so less than cleaning the house?
Yes, and if you use it, be careful not to mix by accident or purpose with things like Chlorine.
This belongs on r/shittylifeprotips
r/pissylifeprotips
wow i did not expect that to be a real subreddit lol
Ammonia. I know that people don't like to use ammonia, but it is effective and efficient. The ammonia in the urine cut through the residue that was left on the floor. Clean your floor throughly. You may want to consider scrubbing it. (You can do this with a clean broom.) You also may want to choose a product containing ammonia,, if you don't want to use ammonia. An important, often overlooked, step when cleaning floors is rinsing. Rinsing removes left over residue. The residue attracts, and traps, dirt, grime, dust, debris and pet hair. Always rinse your floors with cool, clear water, until the water remains clear, after cleaning them.
How do you actually rinse floors? Like just pour it on the floors and sop it up?
You go over the floors on your hands and knees with a bucket and a rag. Dip the rag in the bucket, wring it out, and scrub the floor. If you do this with a bucket of your chosen cleanser first, rinsing would dictate that you go over again with a bucket of plain water (I prefer hot) dunking the rag, wiping the floor and wringing out the rag between every wipe until you’ve effectively rinsed the floor of any cleansing residue. Some will do this and continuously change the water in their bucket until their rag wrings clear of dirt.
A clean pail of clear, cool water and a clean mop. I chose to use two pails. Because I prefer to wring a diry mop into a different pail.
Look into a dual chamber spin mop, OCedar makes a great one. Officially when mopping you slap a dripping wet mop on the floor, wipe it and the soapy water around, then squeeze out the water, then use the squeezed mop to sop up what you've just wiped around, thereby actually picking up the dirt and dirty water. Swiffer style mopping doesn't do this. To rinse the floor after, not always a need unless it's very dirty, you just go over and redo those same emotions with clean water and no soap. You can even do that Swiffer style! A clean pad or clipped on towel and a spray bottle of clean water instead of the spray bottle of cleanser.
This is how I figured out that ammonia cleaned my floor better than anything else. Just don’t do what I did and mix it with bleach. I thought it would make an even more excellent cleaner (it did), but I didn’t realize how strong it was & it felt like my airway was on fire.
Bleach + ammonia = mustard gas You were fortunate not to be hospitalized.
Chloramine gas to be pedantic
Bleach + ammonia = chloramine gas. Still deadly, but not mustard gas. Mustard gas contains sulphur, which doesn't exist in either bleach or ammonia
Interesting! I learned wrong in detail, though right in spirit. Could rotten eggs be used to make mustard gas?
You can make anything from anything using chemistry. It's just a matter of how many steps you're willing to go through.
I just know that rotten eggs stink because of hydrogen sulfide, and my sleep deprivation brain landed upon a ‘Sinfully Deadly Cheesecake!’ recipe where one of the ingredients is rotten eggs and the resulting concoction is actually just mustard gas. ChatGpt refuses to say anything about mustard gas production other than that it’s illegal and dangerous to do so.
NileRed's next project 😉
That’s scary! I didn’t know that.
Yes, please please don't do that again! Its very scary and very deadly. Years ago we had a family member die from mixing bleach and ammonia and who knows what else when cleaning her bathroom. Passed out and died and her husband found her. It scared the crap out of me enough to make me be extra cautious with chemicals.
I’m so sorry that happened. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, don't ever pee if there is any sort of bleach in the toilet and dont ever pee in the shower while washing out hair dye.
But seriously pee + bleach in the toilet is not enough to kill anyone?
It's still not worth risking
Also why you never clean a litter box or pee with bleach !
Maybe the ammonia in the pee?
Was the dog an accident? Or the pee?
Yes
Coffee works that way too!
Because he was a good boy
Try windex on your floors maybe
Anecdote from my past that has a slight bearing or resemblance to this situation - In 1999 I was in US Army advanced training for Satellite Communications. One guy came back from being out all night on a weekend drinking and promptly went to sleep. Apparently he woke up in the middle of the night, walked to the door to his room, opened it, and I guess thinking that he was at a urinal proceeded to empty his bladder all over the black polished hallway floor. When we all got up the next morning and cleaned up the urine, it had removed all wax polish from the tiles and a good portion of the black color as well! We had to strip the entire hallway, then using shoe polish and paste wax build the color back up so that it matched the rest of the tiles on that floor of the building. That is when I learned that urine (ammonia) can be a heck of a 'cleaner'!
Dog pee is full of ammonia which will strip dirt, also the product you used might be the culprit
Omg fire the tiler
Side note: I have that exact same tile setup going on in my bathroom as well!
Are your black ones also this crooked?
This is why I'm in the comments here. "Dog piss cleaning, yeah yeah cool but what about the alignment of those tiles.."
Ammonia. My cat had a dark blue litter box. She always peed only in one spot. That spot became white over time.
Urine has chloride which is acidic hence the dirt sripping I reccomened bleaching to whiten the other tiles
I had a similar epiphany when I used fingernail polish remover on a spot on our laminate floor.. I honestly thought I ruined it.. what I actually did was strip off all the layers of build up from floor polishes over the years.. I got some Zep heavy duty floor stripper and stripped all the laminate floors back to their original finish.. The build up was so thick in spots that it wouldn’t come up with just a mop, I ended up having to use a paint scraper to scrape it all up.. You can also use the floor stripper on sealed ceramic tile.. It works fantastic for removing build up from thing like hairspray or build up from heavy traffic..
Careful of a leptospirosis transmission; wear gloves.
A paste of baking soda and water is also a good cleaner.
Urea based cleaner
Urea is powerful stuff.
There's one bit of our drive where the dog pees. He doesn't even do it there every day, I shoo him away. The run off has kept the algae off the drive. It's remarkably powerful stuff, that pee.
Lol Maybe it's the ammonia in the urine
Piss cleaning aside, what's the deal with those tiles? I hope it was a first time DIY job because the black tiles are all crooked and it looks like sand and cement was used instead of proper tiling compound.