The Enzyme Cleaner Guide: Conquer Stains & Odors for Good

Living in Chicago, keeping your space clean can feel like a second job. Between work, family, and trying to enjoy the city, who has time to scrub away stubborn stains and mystery odors? If you’ve ever cleaned something only to find the smell or stain lingers, you’re not alone—and it’s not your fault. The secret weapon you might be missing is an enzyme cleaner. Let’s break down what they are and how they can make your life easier.

Have you ever tackled a mess, scrubbed until your arms were sore, and the stain or smell just wouldn’t budge? It’s incredibly frustrating. The issue often isn’t your effort—it’s the product. Many tough stains and odors are organic, meaning they need a specialized solution to break them down at a molecular level. That’s where enzyme cleaners come in. Think of them as your secret cleaning agents, designed to seek out and destroy the source of the problem, not just mask it.

What Are Enzyme Cleaners, Really?

Enzymes are natural catalysts. In cleaning, they act like microscopic scissors, chopping up large, gross organic molecules (like those from food, pet accidents, or body fluids) into tiny, harmless pieces that can be easily rinsed or blotted away. They don’t disinfect, but they *digest* the organic gunk that causes stains and bad smells in the first place.

The best part? When you use the right enzyme for the job, it works with minimal effort from you. You spray, let it dwell, and watch the magic happen. This is the kind of deep cleaning help that can transform a frustrating chore into a simple task. For the toughest jobs, sometimes the best solution is to schedule a cleaning with pros who have these powerful tools on hand.

Enzymes vs. Your Other Cleaning Products

It’s important to know where enzyme cleaners fit in your arsenal:

• All-Purpose Cleaners are great for everyday dust, light grease, and fingerprints. They won’t tackle deep-set organic stains or odors.
• Disinfectants are designed to kill germs but don’t clean surfaces or remove soil. You must clean first, then disinfect.
• Enzyme Cleaners are your specialists. They target organic, greasy, grimy, smelly messes that other cleaners can’t handle.

Think of it this way: you wouldn’t ask a teacher to fix your plumbing. For a truly professional home cleaning, you need the right tool—or the right team—for each specific job.

Choosing the Right Enzyme for the Mess

Enzymes are picky and purpose-built. Using the wrong one will lead to frustration. Here’s your simple guide:

1. For Protein Stains (Sweat, Urine, Blood, Vomit)

These come from animals or our own bodies. You need an enzyme cleaner containing protease, which breaks down protein. This is a lifesaver for bathroom odors or pet accidents. If you’re tired of battling these smells, consider reaching out to a cleaning service near me that uses professional-grade enzyme treatments.

2. For Oil & Grease Stains (Cooking Grease, Makeup, Butter)

If it’s slippery and smears, it’s likely a grease stain. The enzyme you need is lipase, which breaks down fats. This is perfect for greasy range hoods and backsplashes.

3. For Starch/Sugar Stains (Pasta Sauce, Gravy, Jam)

Sticky, syrupy, or crusty messes call for amylase. This enzyme breaks down starches and sugars.

For most household messes, look for a cleaner that contains a blend of these three enzymes. For specific pet stains, brands like Nature’s Miracle are excellent. When life gets too busy for specialized cleaning, you can always book an appointment and let a trusted Chicago cleaning company handle it.

How to Use Enzyme Cleaners Correctly

This is the most crucial step! Enzymes need time to work.

• Dwell Time is Everything: Spray liberally so the surface stays wet for 5-10 minutes (or longer per instructions). Don’t wipe it off immediately!
• Follow Instructions: Some require rinsing, some require blotting, and some for laundry can just be washed.
• Patience May Be Needed: For set-in stains, you might need to repeat the application once or twice.

Where to Use Enzyme Cleaners in Your Home

These powerful cleaners are versatile. Use them on:

• Carpet & upholstery stains
• Greasy kitchen hood vents and backsplashes
• Smelly sinks and drains
• Garbage, compost, and recycling bins
• Diaper pails and litter boxes
• Stinky laundry and sports gear
• Old milk smells in cars
• That persistent “pee” smell in bathroom grout

Tackling all this can be overwhelming. If you’d rather get your space cleaned thoroughly and efficiently, professional services are a game-changer.

Your Chicago Cleaning Solution

Enzyme cleaners solve problems that standard products can’t. They are a smart, effective addition to your cleaning toolkit. But let’s be real—sometimes, you just want the job done without the research and effort. You want to come home to a spotless, fresh-smelling space without having to lift a finger.

That’s where we come in. As a dedicated home cleaning service in Chicago, Jikas Cleaning uses industry knowledge and powerful products to handle the tough stuff. Whether you need a regular refresh or a one-time apartment cleaning, we’re here to help. Why spend your weekend scrubbing when you could be enjoying the city? Let us be someone to clean my apartment so you don’t have to.

If you’ve cleaned something and it still smells or there’s a stain associated with that mess and it just won’t go away, it’s not that you weren’t scrubbing hard enough. It could be that you just didn’t use the right product because sometimes certain stains or messes are organic and they need an enzyme to literally eat them until they’re gone. So, in this video, we’re going to talk about enzyme cleaners. I’m going to explain to you exactly what they are, the different types of enzymes that exist, how to choose the right one for the mess that you’re tackling, and of course, how to use them. And once you start using the right enzyme cleaner for the stain or mess that you’re trying to tackle, you’ll see how it outperforms any other cleaning product that you could throw at it. And if you’re new here, welcome to the Clean MySpace channel. My name is Melissa Maker. I’m an accidental cleaning expert, which means I hate cleaning. Maybe you do, too. But I like to find the most easy and efficient way to get the job done right the first time. So, if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean My Space channel. I think enzyme cleaners are some of the most misunderstood cleaning products in the entire cleaning verse cleanverse. Okay? Either you spray them on, wipe them off, and get really frustrated because they’re not working properly, and you expect them to work like the way other cleaning products work, or you just see them and you pass them by because they almost feel too complex or like there’s too much of a learning curve before you pick it up and actually get the results that you want. Enzymes are catalysts, which means they speed up chemical reactions without being used up in the process. In cleaning, enzymes act like little tiny specialized scissors. They’ll break up big gross mess molecules into smaller pieces and lift away or rinse away that mess more easily. Or if you think about how we digest things, our saliva contains digestive enzymes. You put a cracker in your mouth, you chew it a few times, and all of a sudden it’s like liquidy and easier for your body to digest. That’s because your saliva contains the right kind of enzymes for digestion. Here’s the thing. Enzymes don’t sanitize or disinfect, they are strictly designed to digest organic soil. So instead of masking odors like some cleaning products might do, they’re designed to go on a search and destroy mission and find where those odors came from. They’ll get rid of whatever the material is that’s causing that bad smell in the first place. Now, here’s the thing about enzymes. They’re picky. They don’t like to fix all the problems. They’re very purpose-built. And that’s why it’s really important that you get the right enzyme to clean a specific mess. And when you do use the right enzyme to tackle a certain cleaning job, it is like cleaning magic. Angels sing. The product just works so well. You spray it on, let it sit, it does its job. You hardly need to lift a finger. So, when we think about the different cleaning products that you might have in your cleaning arsenal, I want you to understand where enzymes fit in. Let’s think about our all-purpose cleaner to begin with. What does it do? It kind of cleans light grease or grime or fingerprints. It sort of helps to shine up surfaces and get rid of that everyday grime, but it’s not going to break down any of that odorcausing organic material. Or if you have a really heavyduty, greasy, grimy fingerprint or smear, it’s not going to tackle that either. Now, a disinfectant’s job is only to kill germs on surfaces. It’s looking for bacteria, viruses, and fungi. But disinfectants will not remove soil, remove odors, or leave a surface looking clean and shiny. In order to use a disinfectant properly, you have to engage in the two-step cleaning process, which I’ve talked about many times here on the Clean MySpace channel. You got to clean first, disinfect. Now, enzyme cleaners, this is where things get exciting. They are designed for anything organic. So, anywhere that there’s greasy, grimy, heavy duty buildup, bad odors, a stain, this is where enzymes really shine. So, we’re not really using enzymes in lie of all-purpose cleaners, disinfectants, and glass cleaners. It’s simply something we’re adding to our cleaning arsenal, and we’re going to pull out whenever we find something that an enzyme is best suited for. Okay, now this is the part that nobody explains. You see, you hear the word enzymes and you think any enzyme is the same as the other enzymes, and that is not the case. Enzymes are very specific products. So, if you’re going to have the hairdresser, the hairdresser is only going to cut hair. If you’re going to have the contractor, they know how to do stuff around the house. If you’re going to have the teacher, they know how to educate. You’re not going to ask the teacher to cut the hair and vice versa. Now, there are certain enzyme cleaners that have blends of enzymes, and those are great, and I don’t want to over complicate things, but we’ll talk about those shortly. The most important thing you need to remember is that the mess, the stain, or the odor that you are dealing with has to be in line with the enzyme cleaner that you are choosing, or else you’re going to be frustrated. So, let me help break this down for you. Do you see what I did there? Break it down. It’s an enzyme joke. So, every type of problem that an enzyme can solve in your home. Like, they can solve a lot more problems in the world, but we’re just going to focus on your house fall into one of three categories. The first one, protein stains. Protein comes from animal-based products, but also from your body. So, I’m talking sweat, urine, feces, vomit, blood, anything else that you can imagine coming from a person or a mammal or an animal is going to have a certain smell associated with it. And if you’re dealing with a protein stain, you need to use an enzyme cleaner that has protease in it. Cuz you know why? Protise breaks down protein. Type number two are oil or grease stains. If it’s slippery or smears or spreads easily, it’s oily. it’s greasy. And if you’ve got an oil stain like cooking grease or butter or makeup or something along those lines, the type of enzyme that you’re going to need is lipes because that is what breaks down fat. If you notice that you’ve ever used a cleaning product on something greasy and it just can’t seem to cut it, that’s because the cleaning product you were using didn’t have lipes in it. The next type of stain is a starch or a sugar stain. So if it’s sticky, syrupy, gets crusty, that kind of thing, it’s going to be a starch type stain. This is like pasta sauce, gravy, ice cream, jam, that kind of thing. And to break down this kind of stain, you’re going to need amalayise as the key enzyme. If you pick up an enzyme based cleaner that contains the three enzyme types that we covered, proteins, lipes, and amalayise, you should be good to take care of those three areas that we’ve just talked about. And broadly speaking, that will solve your problem. However, if you have a very specific or purpose-built issue, and what I’m referring to here is pets. I think if you have a pet, getting a pet specific enzyme cleaner is really useful. And the ones that I like, Nature’s Miracle is a brand that is well known in the pet space. They have a number of different purpose-built enzyme cleaners to deal with pet stains, as well as Rocco and Roxy. When it comes to everything else that you’re going to deal with at home, whether it’s vomit or urine building up around the bathroom and you constantly have that kind of pea smell in the bathroom that you can’t get rid of, or if you have a stain on your clothing, it’s a grease or an oil stain and you can’t quite lift it out. Or if there’s a glob of jam on the kitchen counter and it’s super stubborn and you don’t know what else to do, or grease all over the hood vent. These are all problems that enzyme cleaners can solve, but you don’t need to get 40 of them. Like I said, you want to get one that contains those three key enzymes. Some of the products that I really love that can help solve these problems are Puracy Stain Remover, BioClean Backout, and even Active has a product called Active Pet Stain and Odor Eliminator. So, this is another product. It’s called Easycle. It’s a Canadian product and it’s designed for pet messes, but I really love using this one in particular to clean garbage and recycling and compost. So, what you do is you take your garbage can and let’s say it’s got a bunch of garbage juice in there. That’s actually better. You spray the product in there and you just let it sit. You don’t have to do anything. The product works on its own and the next morning or the next day, whatever the case may be, you don’t have any liquid left and there’s no odors. I love it cuz it’s a no rinse product. Now, the really important thing to know about using enzymebased cleaners is that they work a little bit differently. You have to spray them on the surface and let them do their work. If you’ve followed Clean MySpace for any amount of time, you’ve heard me refer to dwell time before. And that is the amount of time it takes for a cleaner to sit on a surface so it can do its job correctly. If you spray an enzyme cleaner on and wipe it off right away, it will have no time to do its work. Remember, you’re sending this on a seek and destroy mission. So, you want to spray the product on liberally. The surface has to be wet for at least 5 to 10 minutes, if not longer. And then, according to package instructions, you’ll either wipe it away, rinse it, blot it, or you might just leave it and throw it in the laundry. It all depends. So, make sure that you follow those instructions to the letter. The other thing you want to keep in mind is that sometimes they won’t work right away. You might need to repeat it once or twice. A great example is a laundry stain, but trust me, enzymes are going to be your best bet if you’re dealing with a tough stain. Some really great uses for enzyme cleaners around your house are carpet stains. So, if there are stains in your carpet or even your upholstery that you haven’t been able to get rid of, enzymes are going to be able to deal with it for you. Greasy, grimy overhead exhaust filters and hood vents, as well as backsplashes. If you have bad odors coming out of your sink or your drain, it’s probably something an enzyme cleaner can help you with. Of course, garbage cans, compost bins, recycling bins, diaper pales, kitty litter boxes. These are all areas that enzymes can help as well. Stinky laundry, enzymes. By the way, a lot of laundry detergents contain enzymes. So, have a look at those ingredients. Got a blood stain? Get an enzyme cleaner. If you walk into a bathroom and you notice there is that distinct pea smell and you can’t get rid of it, it’s because pee has probably saturated into the grout in the tiles or if you have any carpet in there, enzyme cleaners are going to help get rid of that odor for good. If you spilled milk in your car a really long time ago and you can’t get that bad smell out, enzymes will do it for you. Stinky hockey gear, stinky sports gear, yeah, get yourself a specialty enzyme cleaner and spray it in there. It’ll take care of that bad odor. Do you see where I’m going with this? Those really difficult smells and stains that are caused by organic material can be problem solved with the right enzyme. And look, the cost of enzyme cleaners aren’t outlandish either. They’re really reasonably priced, especially when you think about the cost of throwing out something that you thought was ruined because you couldn’t get rid of a stain or a smell. We learned a lot today. Enzymes are a different type of cleaner, but they will solve cleaning problems that you might have better than anything else out there, as long as you’re using the right product for the job. And that brings me to this week’s comment question, which is, have you ever used an enzyme cleaner at home? If so, what has your experience been? Let me know in the comments down below. I am telling you, I am so diehard about enzymes. The first time I experienced them was way back in 2006 when I first started my cleaning business. And I used them as an all-purpose general solution to clean my hardwood floors. Someone had been using a an oil soap, you know which one I’m talking about, to clean the floors and it left a whole bunch of residue. Then I used this enzyme cleaner as a solution that I mixed up in a mop bucket and I cleaned the hardwood floors and they shined like they had never shone before. I almost shed a tear. It was so beautiful. Anyway, let me know your experience in the comments down below. Every week we put out a really great newsletter. It’s called the Dirty Dish and it is strictly designed to solve your cleaning problems. So if you want to get involved with that, there’s a link for you to sign up in the description box down below. Also, if you like the work that we do here at Clean My Space, consider becoming a member. And if you think enzymes are cool to clean with, what about rubbing alcohol? You can check out this video right over here where I share all kinds of rubbing alcohol hacks that you need to know. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you subscribe to the Clean MySpace channel. Thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you next time.