Ask Mrs. Clean: House Cleaning, Stain Removal and Organizing Tips

[MaintenanceOne]

Keeping carpets clean is the hardest thing to achieve when dealing with office cleaning. If don’t believe it, just ask your commercial cleaning company.

Every carpet needs regular cleaning to keep bacteria, dust, and dirt under control. These are guilty for the deterioration of carpets and can really shorten their use. However, the worse problem commercial cleaning staff encounters is stains. These really make the carpet look ugly and convey an unprofessional image.

Here we present several tips to help you keep your carpets clean when an emergency occurs and the professionals are not around:

8. Coffee stains
This is probably the most common type of stain that you will find in office carpets. When dealing with a coffee spill, soak up the excess with a towel, clean with soda water, dry with a cloth, and repeat until the stain disappears.

9. Wine stains
We’ve all been there. You’re having a sweet glass of red wine to celebrate a colleague’s birthday or an office achievement when suddenly, tragedy strikes! Red wine is spilled over the white carpet. Luckily, this is a very easy problem to solve: just pour some white wine or soda water over the fresh red wine spill. If you spill white wine instead, spray with soda water.

10. Beer stains
These are not very common in the office, but if you happen to spill some, you should soak up the liquid with a paper towel and clean with warm water or soda water.

11. Chewing gum
This is a true nightmare! If you don’t get it right, you will lose your carpet. We recommend putting ice in a bag and rubbing it on the gum so that it solidifies, and then scrape as much as possible with a blunt knife. After this is done, use carpet shampoo to clean the spot, wait until it dries, and finally vacuum it.

12. Ink stains
These are also very common in the office. The treatment will depend on the type of ink:

- Ballpoint ink stains have to be dried up ASAP. Wipe with menthylated spirits or apply a stain remover.

- Fountain pen ink stains have to be diluted with soda water and washed out as much as you can. Make a hot mixture of soap flakes, leave it on the stain for fifteen minutes, and clean. Repeat this procedure until the stain is gone.

13. Grease, oil, fat, and candle stains
Put blotting or brown paper on the stain, put a cloth over the paper and iron the spot at medium heat so that the grease adheres to the paper. Later, apply carpet shampoo. If the stain shows up again after a few weeks, it means the grease was sucked inside the carpet, and you will have to look for professional treatment to clean it.

14. Tar stains
These also give cleaning staff the biggest headache. If you don’t remove them right, you will have to simply change the carpet. Start by scraping the excess tar off, combine equal parts of glycerin and water, apply and leave for one hour; finally rinse with water. Do this until the stain is no longer visible.

Yep! Stains can cause you physical pain! You and your personnel should be extra careful when handling beverages or materials that could cause serious stains. Prevention is the best practice; however, accidents happen. Stay calm, follow the instructions above, and call your office cleaning service immediately for professional support.

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Rachel Clarkson
office cleaning

[Cleaningman]

I posted a new subject in a different area of this website about a product that I found that works excellent to remove stains and odors from your carpet. I now use this product, called Odor-Z-Way, in my business to clean old and new stains out of carpet and to get rid of odors that I could not always get rid of from just cleaning the carpets. All I need to remove most of these stains is this Odor-Z-Way product and a little water. On the dry stains I just dampen the area with a little water and sprinkle this powder product onto the stained area and rub the product in. I then vacuum the spot up once the area has dried and the stain is gone. For the grease and tar stains I use a solvent instead of water to loosen the stain. This stuff is crazy how well it works. I have also started using this product because it is not a chemical which I like and my customers really like.

[gustavas007]

I'm doing carpet cleaning at the department of transportation offices, and they have a lot of tar in the carpets. I do notice when I go in to clean carpets if the cleaners have been trying to spot clean or not.

I do like when they spot clean, but it's bad when they don't know what they are doing and it makes my job just that much harder. so thanks for the guide.

I think Coffee stains is the most common stain in the office cubical, besides just the usual dirt.

If you are the janitor in a large office building and have access to a steam cleaner in the janitorial closet, it makes it really nice you you clean one small section every week, just enough so the whole building is cleaned once or twice a year. it might put me out of a job, but your clients will love it!