Picture yourself on the living room floor, squatting and scrubbing for dear life. In no time, this carpet, which you used to walk on as if floating through a cloud, had reached a state in which it needed to feature in a crime scene. Ah, carpet cleaning northern beaches those jobs taken so light end up spiraling downhill into a comedy of errors if tread unwarily. While many approach this task with relish, most come away with a carpet that looks something like a saturated sponge.
One of the very first sins committed is just throwing some kind of indiscriminate cleaning product on the carpet and expecting magic to work: “It worked in the kitchen; surely it will work on my carpet!” Most of those carpet cleaners are based on strong chemicals which may have already overexposed and bleached or destroyed such sensitive fibers. Again, go for mild soaps or professional-grade cleaners for carpets.
And another no-no is mixing chemicals-mixing any kind of chemicals on your carpet is a big no-no.
Now, the other common misadventure: over-wetting. Over-saturating your carpet is like feeding a gremlin after midnight; nothing good ever comes from it. Too much water soaked in might seep through to the underlay, making mold and mildew that smells like that forgotten gym bag in the corner of your closet and may also be hazardous to your health. Just be patient: a dab will do, not drowned. Think about handling a toddler, not something in a cleaning tsunami.
The saga of vacuuming comes into play. Oh, missing vacuuming before actually cleaning the carpet turns out to be the most frustrating day, quite similar to painting a wall without washing the dust off it-pointless and messy. Do it prior to prevent dirt and debris from mixing with your cleaning solution into a really nasty cocktail. Then, vacuum again once the carpet dries.
I know this is somewhat superfluous, but consider this carpet therapy-a nice pampering never did anyone an injury. It’s a pretty common myth floating around in Northern Beaches that hiring a steam cleaner guarantees professional results. Ha, good one! Without the proper know-how, these machines can be as fiddly as assembling flat-pack furniture. Overheating or excess moisture ensues if it is not used properly. If jittery about handling one, call in the professional. It’s not worth the stress on your Saturday afternoon. Rugs on carpets-yes, laying a rug on the carpet while it is still wet. Of course, you may apparently be hurrying up the drying process or concealing the imperfections, but in reality, you trap in the moistures. This makes it the perfect breeding ground for mold. Let the carpet breathe out, dry out completely, and then bring back any decoration. It may add a few stories to your chaotic living room, but patience pays dividends. Finally, consider how taking no notice of small drips and spills makes a bigger catastrophe.
But like doing laundry or dishes, procrastination tends to increase the size of the chore. Just one minute of blotting saves several hours of work later. If you kept bumping your toe each time you walked by that wine spot on the carpet, you’d probably climb to take care of it sooner, right?
Now, let’s continue our carpet care odyssey: talking about wrong ways to take out stains. We are all there, staring helplessly at a glass of red wine which has spilled onto the carpet, or the remains of muddy footprints left by the family dog. The urge would be to jump onto the stain and scrub it hard, just like sanding a piece of wood. But hold your horses! Scrubbing crinkles carpet fibers and makes the stain worse by setting deeper. Blot-never rub.
Press gently with a clean cloth or paper towel; let the stain lift of their own accord. Jumping over to those particularly stubborn, hard-to-remove stains, the temptation can be very real to reach for homemade concoctions. Think twice before playing carpet-cleaning alchemist in your kitchen. Baking soda and vinegar are supposed to be the dynamic duo of cleaning hacks, but honestly, they aren’t always those magical workers they’re made out to be. Sure, they are very effective separately or at specific times, but their mixture creates just a fizzy reaction that looks like it works but really renders both substances ineffective. Plus, your carpet isn’t some baking soda volcano school science experiment.
Choose wisely to avoid headaches and heartaches later. The other major duty which people commonly err on is carpet deodorizing. We love our carpets to smell like a meadow, and while this might just be a utopian dream, it is wrong to sprinkle too much deodorizing powder around. After some time, this powder residue settles in the fiber structure of the carpet and, not having been well-vacuumed, leads to carpet fiber rigidity. It would be like having cake flour which does not mix, leaving little pockets of surprise.
NAP:
Carpet Care Specialists Mosman
50 Yeo St, Neutral Bay, NSW, 2089
(02) 8311 3724
