Tips For Cleaning Your Carpets

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How To Clean Your Carpet

Isn’t it amazing how fast a carpet can get messy? All it takes is for one child to come in with muddy boots or for a pet to drop his messy toy onto it. Carpet cleaning is not easy to do, but it can be done. If you live in a home with others, you are likely to need to invest a bit of time in keeping your carpet clean and free of debris. The good news is that you can do this by just spending a bit of time on learning how to clean it.

What To Do First

To help you, there are several things that you should do to prepare for your carpet cleaning adventures. If you own a home with carpeting, you need to have the following items on hand at any given time to help provide protection in the long run for your carpeting.

• Terry cloths, white and clean.
• Paper towels, white, no dyes.
• Hydrogen peroxide.
• Mild detergent, such as dish soap.
• Spray bottles.
• High powered vacuum, with clean filters.

You will want to use these products in the event of having to clean up a spill or stain. Keep them in a clean bucket together so that you can get a clean carpet within a few minutes.

General Care Instructions

Carpet cleaning starts by maintaining your carpet. Although you may not see it, there are millions of particles of dust and dander that get deep into your carpet. The more that they are pushed in by walking, the harder they are to remove. One of the most important factors in carpet maintenance for you then is to do regular cleaning of your carpeting.

• Pick up any debris from the floor that is large enough to pick up.
• Vacuum your carpet in one direction, going over the floor thoroughly and several times.
• Vacuum the carpeting in the opposite direction to pull out even more debris that is trapped below the surface and out of your sight.
• To thoroughly clean the carpet, move in several directions and go over the same area several times.
• Keep your vacuum filter cleaned for improved suction and more power for cleaning.

Washing Your Carpet

You should always treat your carpet stains quickly and make sure that they do not wait long to be cleaned. But, you should also maintain your carpet by giving it a good cleaning every once in a while as well. For some people, in some areas of the home this will mean cleaning the carpet just once every six months. For high traffic areas, it is essential to clean it more often, probably monthly.

• If you have a high quality carpet cleaning machine, follow directions provided by it.
• Always test cleaning products on a hidden location so that you know they will not do harm to the area.
• Consider using powder cleaners, but make sure to follow the directions carefully
• For the highest level of carpet cleaning, consider hiring a professional cleaning company to do the job for you. This small investment twice per year is well worth it.

More Carpet Cleaning Tips

It is important to get all of your carpets clean. That means that your area rugs, your throw rugs and your hallway runners all need to be kept clean. Does this sound like a challenging situation? There are some helpful things that you should know about these types of carpet cleaning situations.

Room Size and Area Size Rugs

First, start with the room size or area size rugs. There are two distinct things to realize here. First off, you need to have highly valuable oriental rugs cleaned by a professional. Not only will this insure the quality of the rug and give it the highest level of cleaning available, but it will also help to insure that the area rug does not bleed or have other damage done to it.

For your room size rugs that are not that high in quality, you can generally use your carpet cleaning machine on them. You should consider using an agitator style of cleaner though. These will wash deep into the pile and move the pile enough to get to the base of the carpet, cleaning it thoroughly.

Throw Rugs And Smaller Rugs

Throw rugs may be able to be cleaned in the same way. In many ways, you can have these cleaned in the wash machine as well. Before you do that, make sure to check out the care instructions that are provided by the rug manufacturer.

For your hallway sized rugs, use the same agitator style process as you used for your area rugs. Be very careful of frayed edges. You will want to make sure that these dry out completely especially before you place them on top of any type of carpet that you may additionally have in your hallway.

Always test the chemicals that you purchase for carpet cleaning on the carpet in a hidden location before using them. Some fabrics and products are more sensitive to the chemicals and will therefore be ruined. You can also spot treat your carpeting as needed.