How often do we clean our carpets? Considering that they are the most ill-used items in the house, with so much foot traffic to soil them, we don't really pay them enough attention. We tend to relegate them to the realms of maintenance-free items. Till we suddenly become aware of the fact that they are not. Many of us call in the professionals when carpets look really bad and then forget about them till the next time they are in the same state. The thing is, when you clean your carpet more often, you are extending its life. Isn't that reason enough? How on earth does that happen? The more soiled a carpet gets, the more cleaning agents are needed to get it back into its original state. Not just more, stronger agents may also be needed. This affects the durability of the carpet material and very soon, you'll end up with a frayed carpet that needs to be changed.
Prevention as far as your carpets go, is infinitely better than cure. What's more, you can do the cleaning yourself. Do it yourself or DIY carpet cleaning is getting to be more and more popular thanks to the range of carpet cleaning materials available in the market today. You can do a combination cleaning program. Call in the professionals once in a while and clean regularly in between. Or, you can handle the whole thing yourself. All you need to remember is to always follow the instructions down to the last letter, especially the dilution ratios. Take care never to over-wet your carpets and make sure they dry in 24 hours. This might need a bit of help like drying fans, heaters or extra drying with the equipment used for cleaning. If you don't pay attention to this, you could be laying yourself wide open to problems of odor and microbial growth.
Is the abuse we heap on our carpets unwittingly warranted? Let's look at a typical day. People walk into the house several times and each time, the dirt and soil from their footwear get deposited in the carpet pile. In any home, it will be observed that the most soiled carpet area lies in a 7-foot radius from where you enter the house. Besides cleaning regularly, it would do well to minimize this. You could do that by placing scrap mats or Astroturf runners at every point of entrance - be it the front door, the back entrance or the garage-to-home entry point. These trap a lot of the soil and will lessen the wear and tear on your carpets inside. If the outside mats get too dirty, you can simple throw them away and get new ones. Or, just hose them down if they're the washable kind.
Where do you begin? Start by vacuuming and doing a good, thorough job of it. Stands to reason that the dry dirt and soil are better removed with dry cleaning methods. This helps the cleaning detergents to work very well. If there is a lot of soil in your carpets, the detergent particles will attach themselves to it and will be left in the carpet as residue. So wet cleaning of the carpets after a well-done dry cleaning by vacuuming will be good for your carpet.
Like we said before, clean your carpets often and do regular cleaning. If your carpets get too soiled, you will have to call in the professionals who will probably advice you to do a restorative cleaning job. This lessens the life of the carpet.
So many stains, so little time. Carpet cleaning has sure come a long way over the years since the baking soda paste scrub. Today there are so many different ways to clean a carpet that you can be sure that one of those ways will get rid of the nasty stain. The most common ways today for carpet cleaning are: carpet shampoo, dry powder, steam cleaners, carbonated water, bonnet as well as many home remedies. No matter what your stain is one of these proven methods is sure to get rid of your tough stains. Lets break it down as to which method does what.
The bonnet and carbonated water method of carpet cleaning uses a pre-treat solution of cleaning agents then a rotary tool is used to scrub the stain. At the bottom of the rotary tool is a bonnet or pad if you will, that transfers the dirt from your carpet to the bonnet. You may have heard of such companies as Chem Dry that offers this method. Sort of the methods used by housewives where they use club soda on a stain and then a clean white clothe to soak up the stain by blotting it. This method works much better than just shampooing the carpet. Using shampoo involves spreading carpet shampoo on the stains and scrubbing it in with a brush. The shampoo's can be in dry powder form, foam spray or even liquid. After the shampoo has dried it is then vacuumed up with a vacuum cleaner. This method of carpet cleaning works for quick fixes but mainly just pushes the dirt further into the carpet.
Most Stores Have What You're Looking For
Most every grocery store you walk into has a shelf at the front of the store, which is dedicated, to carpet steam cleaners. You can buy them at most stores such as Target and Walmart. The carpet steam cleaner is perhaps one the most common ways for people to carpet cleaning. Do not be fooled by the name, as steam is not really used in this process but actually hot water. It is affordable and they can do it themselves. With a steam cleaner, shampoo is sprayed onto the carpet mixed with hot water and then scrubbed in with rotary brushes to loosen dirt in the carpet and to clean stains. The steam cleaner then uses strong suction to pull the water and dirt back out of the carpet. This is perhaps the best method out on the market today for carpet cleaning and you can do it your self or opt for the pros to come and take care of it for you.
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