Home Carpet Cleaning Tips

I have put together a few short home carpet cleaning tips, to help you maintain your carpets appearance. I have found over the years of carpet cleaning, many carpets that were over 20 years old, that still didn't really need my attentions.
In comparison, I also cleaned many carpets that were only a few years old and they were in a terrible state. The difference was the amount of attention spent on maintenance between professional cleaning.

When we consider the need for maintenance between carpet cleaning, we are really talking about the way that you remove debris, soil and stains.

Home Carpet Cleaning Tip -Vacuum cleaner choice

Nowadays, most of us would expect to use vacuum cleaners to remove the majority of what is on our carpets. If you would like some help in choosing the best vacuum cleaner for your home, then check out our vacuum cleaner review page.

To be very brief, the best vacuum cleaner for carpeting is an upright vacuum with rotating brush and a beater bar. This will vibrate any grit and dry soil up out of the pile for you to vacuum away. A cylinder vacuum comes in handy for hard floors, stairs and getting in to those awkward places.

Home Carpet Cleaning Tip -How to pick up pins and needles

Attach a number of small magnets to the front of your vacuum cleaner, so that as you are passing over the carpet any pins or needles will be picked up by the magnets, rather than being sucked up by your cleaner.

Home Carpet Cleaning Tip -How often to vacuum your carpets?

Well, this really depends on the makeup of your household and where you live.

If you have a number of young children and pets, then a good deal more soil will be getting on your carpet and so, you could well need to clean up every day. Probably, a quick pass over the traffic areas of your home, and then a more thorough clean twice a week.
If you live on your own, or are now getting a little older, and so are no longer out playing sports or jogging or doing a lot of gardening, then more than likely, there is only a little soil getting on your carpet. So you could get away with only vacuuming once a week.

Home Carpet Cleaning Tip -How to keep stains off the carpet?

Well, the best way is to have a stain retardant treatment applied when you have the carpet fitted. This makes the carpet fibres much mre resistant to stains and should certainly give you the time to wipe up any potential stain, before it has time to set.

If you haven't had this treatment applied, then you will need to react quickly, to wipe up any stain with a damp cloth. Then place a white cloth over the potential stain and blot out as much of the potential stain as possible. If there is still some residue in the carpet, then leave a white cloth over the stain and place something with a bit of weight in it on top, and leave for a couple of hours, to help to draw out any stain.

Home Carpet Cleaning Tip -How to restore your carpet pile?

If you would like your carpet to look it's best, then every now and then it is a good idea to restore the direction of your carpet pile by raking it. There are special carpet rakes available with soft plastic tines that can be used to lift the pile and brush it all in the same direction.

Home Carpet Cleaning Tip -How to remove/prevent draught marks?

Draught marks are caused by air draughts passing through carpet pile and leaving soil deposits behind. They build up over time and can be quite annoying.
I have come across plain light coloured carpets that have horizontal draught marks running along the carpets, matching where the floor boards are.Removing these can be quite difficult, so prevention is much better than cure.

A good quality carpet underlay will prevent draught marks over the majority of the carpet.But the edges of the carpet can be susceptable in some houses. So when replacing your carpets, if you have noticed draught marks on the old carpet, then running some duck tape along the bottom of the skirting boards and up to the carpet gripper, should stop any problems with draught marks.

To remove any draught marks, as well as normal carpet cleaning, you will probably need some extra agitation. We used to have a collection of scrubbing brushes and some of the new plastic/rubber tined brushes that we could encourage the draught marks out with.
I used to have the Host Dry Carpet cleaning system and found that the Host compound was excellent for removing draught marks. This compound could be brushed through the pile and left to dry out for about half an hour and then vacuumed off. On a few occasions, I did this a number of times and then left some compound overnight, instructing the householder to vacuum the compound off the next day. I remember the householder was amazed at the difference.

Home Carpet Cleaning Tip -How to remove wax from a carpet?

If you have managed to drip candle wax on to your carpet, there is a simple way of removing it. Use a domestic iron and some brown paper. Apply the brown paper, dull side on to the candle wax and apply the warm iron to the shiny side of the brown paper, gently warm the paper, and the wax will melt and be absorbed by the paper.
By repeating this process, you can remove all traces of the wax.

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