Carpet Cleaning London – Your Guide To Everyday Carpet Care

Fresh and clean fibres – carpet cleaner’s job done well

Carpets – they add softness and beauty to our homes and workplaces, and they make things a lot more comfy underfoot. I know I’m particularly grateful for my carpet being on the floor when I get down on the floor to do a few Pilates moves! Carpets also make your home warmer, as they trap some nice warm air down at foot level as well as providing some insulation on the floor – snuggly!

However, carpets also pick up dirt really easily and if you ignore them, it’s not long until they get grubby, stinky and generally revolting. What’s more, as a smart woman of the old school once told me, when the carpet looks good, the rest of the house looks good, but if the carpet looks dirty, the rest of the house looks dirty.

So how do you make sure that you keep your house hygienic while still having all the advantages? Here’s a few hacks that should help you stay on top of things without going bonkers.

Stopping The Dirt

Stopping the dirt getting into the carpets in the first place is your first port of call. Obviously, if you can stop grit, grub and grime getting into your mats and rugs in the first place, you don’t have problems trying to get it all out! Here’s a few tips that help in this department:

  • Don’t wear shoes in the house. Use slippers, designated house shoes or bare feet indoors, then put on other shoes when you go out. This is standard practice in heaps of cultures and it’s becoming more acceptable everywhere. You may need to invest in a special rack or mat to store the shoes by the door, but this isn’t too hard to do.
  • Use a doormat. Even if you don’t wear shoes in the house most of the time, there’s always that moment when you just have to nip out to the gate in a hurry and you don’t have time to switch out of your slippers. Wiping any stray particles off the bottom of your feet, slippers or socks will help. What’s more, a doormat will also stop the breeze blowing leaves, dirt and debris through the door to a certain extent. You will have to clean the doormat occasionally, of course, but this can easily be included into a deep cleaning session and any good provider of carpet cleaning services should be able to do this for you. Our recommendation would be CarpetFirst Carpet Cleaners (https://www.carpetfirst.co.uk).
  • Keep crumbs confined. When we eat, we drop crumbs. This is why it’s a good idea to only eat in kitchens or in the dining room. OK, this is the ideal but breakfast in bed is one of the pleasures of life, and we all have had those moments when we need to have a working lunch with a sandwich by the computer in the home office, or when you munch on a bit of popcorn during a Netflix binge. This, dear friends, is why plates and trays were invented. Use them to stop the crumbs getting on the carpet (or down the sofa or in the bed).
  • Don’t keep pets. Pet owners know only too well that most of the ick that gets onto the carpets consists of cat and/or dog hair. Of course, this is a personal choice and I’m certainly not saying that you should say bye-bye to Fluffy or Fido for the sake of your carpets. Regular grooming helps, especially if you do it outside or in an area where the hair is easily swept up.

Everyday Carpet Care

Even if you don’t keep pets, take shoes off at the door and eat only in the dining room, some dust and debris will still get on your carpets and you’ll need to do something about it. The best something that you can do on a regular basis – and we’re talking daily here or at least weekly – is to vacuum your carpets. Vacuuming removes most of the loose dirt and hair from your carpets, and it also helps to fight fleas and other vermin. There’s a world of choice out there when it comes to vacuum cleaners, from Roomba robot vacuums through to traditional Luxes and Hoovers and those heavy-duty canister type vacuums that look like R2D2 from Star Wars.

Commercial Carpet Cleaning in London
Heavy traffic carpeted areas need more attention and care

The other daily thing that everybody can do to care for their carpets is to get ruthless on stains and spills. The golden rule with anything spilt on the carpet is to deal with it straight away. Scrape or blot up whatever you can asap, then treat the stain itself. You may need to call in a specialist stain treatment company if you are unsure how to remove a stain. The team at CarpetFirst can do this for you and they’ve got emergency stain treatment services available.

Deep Cleaning For Carpets

Even the best vacuum cleaner can’t get everything out of the carpets. To get the deep-down dirt and odours out of a carpet, deep cleaning is necessary. Deep cleaning is done in three main ways:

  • Steam cleaning or carpet shampooing: This involves hot water, a bit of detergent at times and plenty of drying time. With professional carpet cleaning, the drying time is shorter because the pros have truck-mounted vacuums that slurp out most of the water as well as the loosened dirt.
  • Bonnet buffing: This is a low-moisture method that’s done with a machine that applies a pad soaked in soda water attached to a machine that blots and scrubs the engrained dirt away.
  • Dry carpet cleaning: This uses no moisture so it’s good for delicate fabrics and upholstery. We use the HOST system of plant-based microsponges that attract the dirt almost like magic so the dirt can be whipped away after the microsponges have been gently brushed through the carpet fibres. It’s non-toxic and environmentally friendly, too!

Deep cleaning is best carried out at least once a year, according to carpet manufacturers. However, if your carpets are particularly prone to getting dirty (if you’ve got five long-haired cats that have trouble finding the litter box, for example), then you may want to deep clean them more frequently.

Deep cleaning is an absolute must if you want to take care of your carpets. In fact, according to carpet manufacturers, you should deep clean them at least once a year (you may find that you need your carpets shampooed or dry cleaned or whatever more often than this).

You might be tempted to go out and hire one of those machines for cleaning your own carpets, but these have a few downsides. Yes, if your carpets are suitable for steam cleaning or hot water extraction, they do a good job of removing odours and ingrained dirt. However, because they don’t have the powerful truck mounted vacuums available to professional carpet cleaners, they leave a lot of water. This means that they take forever to dry out. Ideally, you shouldn’t walk or put furniture on a carpet while it’s drying, because this makes them get dirty again more quickly. Believe me, avoiding walking on the carpets in your house for most of the day is a real nuisance.

At worst, if your carpets don’t suit hot water extraction, using one of these machines could ruin them – urrgh! If this happens to you, you’d really wish that you called in an expert who knows what he or she is doing – and is covered by insurance.

It’s also tricky cleaning your own carpets if you’ve got kids and/or pets in tow. It’s much better if you just get hold of a good professional cleaning company to come in and take care of the job for you. It doesn’t cost the earth, especially if you can find a good carpet cleaner that provides a quote and/or uses a straightforward pricing system. A good company will also be able to clean upholstery and apply Scotchgard stain protection to your carpets, etc. as well if you want!

Stain Busting 101

Mum’s Magic

When we were growing up, it sometimes seemed as though our mothers could work magic. She took those clothes that we had got mud, blood, grass stains, chocolate and egg yolk all over (sometimes all at once) and did things with them that had the items coming back looking spotless and new. When we grew up, we realised that it probably wasn’t magic but it’s still darn tricky to do. Maybe she was dabbling in the Dark Arts to get our dirty clothes that clean.

Photo courtesy of Stephani Spitzer

But she wasn’t. She just knew the right way to tackle stains. Now, you could always phone your mother when you have a difficult stain to wash out, but if she’s anything like my mother and spending her golden years globe-trotting, it’s probably simpler to just learn the right way to do things.

So here’s how to deal with the mud, blood, grass stains, chocolate and egg yolk that you got over your clothes… and that your children are probably getting on their clothes.

Mud

Soak the garment thoroughly, then rub soap into the stain hard. Soak the item in warm or hot soapy water. If the garment has other stains on it, such as blood or egg yolk, deal with those stains first and any lingering mud after that.

Blood

Soak the item in cold water – it’s got to be cold so you don’t set the stain. You can also fizz the blood away with a hydrogen peroxide solution. Then wash as normal – in cold water.

Egg yolk

Do what you do for blood, as they’re both protein stains. One good thing about egg yolk is that it is a bit more solid than blood and tends to crust on the outside of clothes, bibs and tablecloths, meaning that it can be picked or brushed off before trying the soak in cold water treatment.

Grass stains

These are a real pain to remove. Eucalyptus essential oil and/or methylated spirits rubbed well into the stain and left to sit in the fabric go a long way towards dealing with them. This is best followed by a soak in one of those proprietary whitening and brightening solutions of the sort designed for cloth nappies. Then wash as usual – hot or cold.

Chocolate

Surprisingly easy to remove, although any chocolate stain is a waste of chocolate. Warm soapy water usually does the trick, If something’s particularly stubborn, try soaking the item and rubbing soap hard into the spot and working up a good lather.

Beetroot juice

Washes out easily in spite of the bright colour. The only way that beetroot juice works as a deliberate dye is if you add a mordant to the solution.

Permanent marker

These aren’t permanent if you work a bit of meths or strong alcoholic spirits (e.g. vodka) into the spot and wash the garment while the meths or vodka is still wet.

Biro

Also soluble in alcohol but washes out a lot easier than you think. Small smears and scribbles come out in the regular wash. Larger blobs from leaking pens need a soak in alcohol.

Carpet Stains Are Not A Problem If You Remove Them Immediately

No matter how careful you are around the house, you cannot avoid having stains on your carpets. It is a normal, everyday occurrence in the life of every household, especially if you have small children. Actually, stains are not a big issue unless you procrastinate and leave them unaddressed – then you will have the hardest of times removing them.

Coffee, wine, and typical sauces like ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise are a nightmare to remove if you give them more than an hour on the floor. You do not need a special detergent or any professional equipment to deal with the problem – carefully wipe the stain with a wet tissue, then apply baking soda or white vinegar on the spot and rub it in. The stain should come off immediately – if there is any residue on the fabrics, you can repeat the procedure once or twice more.

While the coffee and wine will only leave an ugly stain, the kitchen stuff I mentioned is more dangerous. Ketchup and mayonnaise contain organic fats that will attract all kinds of small particles and will loosen the fabrics of the carpet. To prevent this, you should react quickly or call a professional cleaner as soon as possible.