Keeping Your Carpeting Looking Beautiful

My Carpets Have Just Been Cleaned by a Professional,
But How Do I Keep Them Looking Beautiful?

Let’s face it…having your carpeting professionally cleaned is not the most inexpensive home investment out there. So in order to get the most for your money, you have to have a plan set in place to keep your carpeting as clean as possible, for as long as possible once the technicians have left your home.

I absolutely love helping my customers make their carpeting beautiful again, but I also realize that if I can help them save money in the long run by not having to have me out to their home as often, it will help my customers save loads of money that they can spend on something else.
Okay, let’s talk about the first and absolutely most important item in taking care of your carpeting:

YOUR VACUUM!

Winning by a landslide, the most important maintenance task in keeping your carpeting look better, longer….is vacuuming. You see the fact of the matter is that more than 75% of the soil that is trapped in your carpeting is dry, particulate soil.

If 75% of the job of keeping your carpeting cleaner longer consists of getting rid of the dry, particulate soil in your carpeting, you are in luck! “Why”?...Well, I am glad that you asked. It is because the absolute best solution to keeping the dry, particulate soil out of your home is through frequent vacuuming.

I know, it probably sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, what the situation ultimately comes down to is that most of us have what we consider to be a great vacuum in our house and about 60% of the vacuums on the open market will do a satisfactory job in removing the dry, particulate soil that consist of 75% of the dirt and grime in your carpeting. The problem is that most of us do not vacuum enough in order to keep the dry, particulate soil from acting like sand paper on our carpeting which will rapidly ‘ugly’ out our carpeting.

FACT: Vacuuming your carpeting once per month or even once per week is NOT ENOUGH if you want your carpeting to stay looking beautiful.

Underneath the guidelines set out by the Carpet and Rug Institute, your carpeting should be vacuumed daily and each section should be vacuumed seven times in order to get out as much particulate soil as possible. WHAT!!?? I know, I said the same thing when I learned of this, years ago, and I am a professional. The fact of the matter is that most of us do not have enough time in the day to equivocally vacuum our carpeted area 7 times per day. I know that I don’t. However, if you do and you would like to perform this every day, please do so, after-all, it is what is recommended.

TIP: Anything more than what you are currently doing is a step in the right direction! If you vacuum 1 per week, up it to 2 times per week and then keep working your way up to daily.
Also, here is a factoid that will save you a lot of time if you are busy like so many of us are. Vacuum the first 12 feet into every entrance way on the carpeting daily and then vacuum your whole house every week.

Soiling on carpeting is progressive, which means that the soil will start to build up from where you first step onto the carpeting and then work its way into your home through your main traffic areas. If you can nab the particulate soil daily before it has a chance to snake its way into your home, you will be a lot better off.

Now onto the next item that will help you to keep your carpeting beautiful:

Entrance and Exit Mats

Most of use today have entrance and exit mats in our home and outside of our door; however, I see many cases where they are just not the right type of fiber to keep the dirt on the mat and not on your carpeting.

I won’t bore you with the technical aspects of each fiber type, but I will let you know what type of mats you should have where and why.

Outside Of Your Entrances:
On the outside of your entrance points to your home, you want to have a course mat make up so that those who enter can ‘scrape’ off the large pieces of soil and debris effectively. You see some of the mats that are sold everywhere that are flat without any type of bristle everywhere. These type of mats are great for look good but not too much else. Make sure to get yourself a mat that will actually take something off of the shoes that are entering.

Inside of Your Entrances:
On the inside of the entrances you want to have a softer, plush mat that is made up of either nylon or wool. The fiber type of the mat matters most here. Nylon and Wool make up the best fibers that will absorb soiling from the shoes into the matting.

CAUTION: Do not get an entrance mat for the inside of your home that is made up of polyester or olefin (polypropylene)! These fibers may feel as soft as cotton, but they do not absorb anything inside the fiber, thus defeating the purpose of a mat on the inside of your doorway. Unless you have it there just for looks, but why not have the best of both worlds? …it looks good and it is useful.

95% of the matting that is sold will have the fiber type on the label on the backing. Make sure that you make not of the fiber type, follow the advice given above and you will have an entrance mat that not only looks good, but that is practical as well.

The last tip for today on keeping your carpeting looking beautiful after the cleaning is:

Spotting Products and Techniques

This section will probably offer you the most confusion of all. When you look at the shelves of your local grocery store, how many choices do you have? Dozens? Choices are good, but if there are too many it will often cause confusion. That confusion will typically lead us to pick up the first product where we remember the name of the product from somewhere.

Choosing a spotter just because you remembered the name from somewhere means one thing and one thing only…that company has done an outstanding job in marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of spotters that work great, but there are also plenty of spotters available that are nothing more than great marketing in a box.

So how do you choose? What I have done for my customers of my cleaning firm is made the choice very simple for them. I have private labeled what I consider to be the best all around spotter and give it to them for FREE…for LIFE. Okay, I know I am only in Maryland and there is probably nobody in your area that you know of that offers this type of service. What I am going to do for you is list a couple of bullet points on what type of products to look for and what type of products to stay away from.

• After you have used a spotter, if the spot disappears and then reappears a couple of days later…throw the spotter out. For the short version of the scientific explanation of this occurrence, the spotter that you are using is leaving a soil attracting residue thus defeating the purpose for keeping your carpeting looking cleaner longer.

• Stay Away from oxygenated products. There are plenty of fiber types that an oxygenated product can be used on; however, if used on the wrong fiber type, you will be regretting that you ever used the oxygenated spotter in the first place. Personally, I believe that oxygenated spotter should only be used by trained professionals that have been properly trained in the science of cleaning.

• If all else fails and you are just sick and tired of wasting your money on useless carpet spotters, use the ‘home remedy’ of spotting with 1 part ammonia to 10 parts water and then rinse with a solution made up of 1 part white distilled vinegar to 5 parts water. Although there are some spotters out there that will perform a better job than this home remedy without the ‘smells’ involved, this will get you through in a bind.

So now we are onto the techniques in spotting that you use.

This section will be very straight forward and simple; however, because of the ‘I gotta have it now’ society that we live in today, a lot of us ignore proper spotting techniques because we want the spot gone now and we are not willing to take the time to perform the spotting procedures correctly.

Spotting Techniques:

• Blot (DO NOT RUB OR SCRUB) up as much of the spill IMMEDIATELY with a white absorbent cloth. Yes, paper towels are fine. The technique is to have a couple layers of the fabric that you are using, place it over the spill or spot and press down with some weight in order to transfer the ‘still wet’ spot from the carpeting into the cloth that you are using. Continue this process, constantly turning the cloth to a dry section, until there is no more transfer from the carpeting into the cloth.

This first technique alone will remove 95% – 99% of the spot that you are trying to remove. If you can actually remove this much of a spot if you get to it as quickly as possible and use the technique described above, you can now probably start to see the reason why your carpeting will stay cleaner longer because you have not even used a spotter yet.

• Now to apply the spotter to remove the last 1% - 5% of the spot. Key element here…USE ONLY THE NECESSARY AMOUNT OF SPOTTER NEEDED TO REMOVE THE SPOT FROM THE CARPETING.

You do not want to saturate the carpeting with the spotter that you are using. Just enough to moisten the carpeting, then use VERY GENTLE agitation and then extract with the toweling process.

If you have a ‘home’ carpet extractor, it is actually a little bit easier to perform this process and a lot faster as well. If you do decide to use a home extractor to speed the process, only run water through the machine and spray the detergent onto the spot by the use of a spray bottle. This will ensure that you are not leaving any soil attracting residue from the carpet spotter.

I hope that you have found this information helpful and I guarantee you that if you actually put this tips and tricks into use in your own home, you will have a cleaner more beautiful carpeting for you and your family to enjoy.

If you live in Maryland and are ready to have your carpeting, upholstery or tile and grout rejuvenated back to its best possible condition, please feel free to call us to set up a free in home textile inspection and price quote.

Kris Sokalski
Carpet 1st, LLC
http://www.carpet1st.com/
410-744-2447

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