9 Useful Carpet Cleaning Tips For New Year

January 5, 2015

Keeping your home carpet clean is not an easy task. Neglecting it results in either having to live with less than appealing floor covering or spend a lot on professional carpet cleaning services. Below you can find nine very useful tips and tricks to maintain your domestic carpeting in good shape. However, keep in mind that no matter how much time and effort you invest, you simply can’t replace a service from a professional carpet cleaner.

Our Top 9 Carpet Cleaning Tips

  • 1. Vacuum your carpets thoroughly as often as you can, most of the wearing is caused by dirt. Oily soils attract more of the same and frequent vacuuming will reduce dirt particles build-up.
  • 2. Remove stains quickly. Almost all stains can be removed with ease if they are cleaned in the first few days. The longer a stain is left to react chemically with your home carpet the harder it will be to clean it.
  • 3. Test a spot of the carpet before scrubbing, extracting or spotting. Carpets differ from each other and you should look at the backside marker to determine the type of cleaning suitable for yours. Some carpets are vulnerable to acid type cleaners and could lose their color quickly. Others have dyes sensitive to harsh alkalis so be very careful with these high alkaline or acidic cleaning solutions.
  • 4. Use appropriate spotters starting with the mildest one. Do not use overly harsh cleaning agents unless you know what you are doing and be fast to neutralize high alkaline or high acid cleaners after use.
  • 5. Never dig or brush spots. This could cause a damage to the carpet fabric. The right carpet cleaning procedure is to scrape the spot towards the middle and then tamp the spot into the white towel or cloth. We have covered this topic extensively here.
  • 6. Overuse of cleaning solutions is bad. Too much detergent will result in residual leftovers in the carpet that even thorough vacuuming may not remove. More cleaning compound used does not mean good results. On the contrary, chances are you would ruin the carpet doing it.
  • 7. Be careful with moisture. Most carpet cleaning detergents are chemically active so they do not need huge amount of water. Over-wetting can cause brownout, carpet shrinkage, adhesion problems and all kinds of carpet damage.
  • 8. Remove residue if possible. Scrubbing will clean the carpet fibers the best by uniting dirt and detergent residue, which powders off the carpet. Periodic steam cleaning will flush out this dirt and other particles trapped deep into your home carpet.
  • 9. Never “coat” a dirty or spotty carpet. After scrubbing or extracting a dirty carpet, if you are not satisfied by the results, do not apply a coat of carpet protector you will be making it harder to remove it the next time. Either re-scrub or extract dirt and soil or leave it for the next cleaning before you coat.