The Best Way to Clean Carpets

As hard as you try your carpets just don’t seem to stay clean. Does this sound familiar to you? If so, this article is meant to give a general overview on how to help keep your carpets cleaner. This article also has the basics steps needed for cleaning your carpet if it does become soiled.

Tracking dirt, mud and other debris into your house is one of the ways that people’s carpets get dirty. Having a pair of indoor slippers located by your front door and a pair of outdoor sandals by your backdoor – if you have one- can help you to keep from tracking this debris all over your carpet. Whenever coming in from outside make sure to slip off your shoes and into your indoor slippers.

Spilling things on your carpet is also a really fast way to stain your carpets. Although there are a lot of things that you can put on spills, I’ve found that gently sponging the spill with water in a blotting manner when the spill first occurs will help to prevent it from staining. After blotting the stain with the wet sponge – or rag- sprinkle a little baking soda on the area and then vacuum it up after 20 to 40 minutes depending on the intensity and the color of the contents spilled on the carpet. Let the baking soda sit for longer in the color is darker.

If for some reason your carpet is already stained, the following formula seems to be the best for getting the carpet the closest to new looking as it can be. Start with one room of your house at a time. Make sure that it is a room that will not be used for at least 12 hours. People walking across the carpet during the process will only hinder its ability to be as clean as possible.

The first step is to completely vacuum the carpet. After vacuuming you want to spray a carpet cleaner on the carpet. This can just be a generic carpet spray for stains and dirt. After lightly spraying the areas that are darker or dirtier, you want to let this sit for about an hour. After an hour, vacuum these areas. You then want to blot at these areas with a wet sponge or rag to help further break up some of the dirt still there. After this you’ll want to vacuum again.

After this process you will need to use a carpet cleaning machine. You can either rent one – a rug doctor or something similar- or you can buy a smaller, hand powered carpet cleaner. Please keep in mind that the hand powered carpet cleaner will take more work on your part and it will take a longer period of time. Use the carpet cleaning machine to go over your carpets. Do not over spray the stains. Doing so can leave water marks or soap stains on your carpet. Let the cleaning solution sit for 4 hours and then vacuum your carpet. Repeat cleaning only the stained areas with the carpet cleaning machine. Let the solution sit for two hours this time. At this point you should lightly sprinkle a carpet cleaning and odor powder on your carpet. Let this sit for 20 minutes and then re-vacuum the entire carpet. You can move on to your next room now.