Maintaining Your Home – Floor Carpet for Long Durability

Your beloved home is your paradise on the earth and, if well furnished and maintained, it is simply a gift from the Heaven. Maintenance of your floor carpet not only ensures its long durability but also goes a long way towards the overall neat-and-clean look of the whole house.

Followings are a few very useful tips to help you keep your floor carpet well maintained. No carpet can last forever, but acting upon the following tips will definitely extend the life of your floor carpet to prove an appreciable durability. Let’s dive in.

1. Place floor mats at the entrances

Floor mats placed both inside and outside the entrances traps the soil stuck to your shoes before you actually enter the house. Otherwise, all the dirt and litter will track into the rooms and get stuck with the carpet fur and fibres.

2. Be quick to clean the spots and spills then and there

It is almost impossible while living in a family set-up, blessed with children, to keep your floor carpet from getting stained and spotted with different colourful substances or liquids spilt at random or abruptly. In order to get better results, you should follow the following tips in this connection.

• Remove solid materials from your carpet fur with the help of a spoon or a dull knife.
• Always avoid using a brush to rub or scrub a solid material as it may damage the fibres of your carpet.
• You may use a white towel to blot up a liquid from the carpet.
• Always use an appropriate cleaning agent and, while using it, never apply it directly to the stained area to avoid saturating the carpet; rather use it after applying it to a piece of cloth first.
• Always keep in mind that you are supposed to clean the fibres not the backside.
• If you happen to work with large stains, always move from the outside to their centres to avoid spreading.
• Never leave your carpet unattended after giving it the initial cleaning, for large and deep stains often require repeated cleaning.

Vacuum your carpet regularly

You are never required to vacuum your floor carpet on daily basis. Rather you are supposed to do so weekly or fortnightly. You may manage a good quality vacuum cleaner from capital equipment hire or some other source. If you use a beater bar or a rotating brush with your vacuum cleaner, the dirt particles stuck strongly with the carpet fibres will get loosened and it will become very easy for the vacuum cleaner to pick and remove soil altogether.

If you have covered your floors with a carpet having thick loop pile construction, using a vacuum cleaner with suction action will be the only option left with you. This is because such Berber carpets are always sensitive to brushing, scrubbing or rubbing and scraping of the pile surface, for such treatments may cause fuzzing and pile distortion.

You also have the option of using carpet sweepers or electric brooms along with vacuuming your carpet time and again, but these two gadgets never give you a deep clean.

An easy homemade method to remove the stains from your floor carpet

• Mix one cup of white vinegar with two cups of water.
• Apply the vinegar solution to the base of the stain using your finger tips instead of any brush.
• Use clear lukewarm water and wet the stained carpet fibres to rinse them properly.
• Put an absorbent white towel or paper towel on the wet spot and apply pressure to blot properly.
• To ensure all the traces of the detergent have been removed completely, repeat the rinsing and blotting again and again.
• To absorb any remaining stain, you must apply high pressure on the paper towel by using a heavy object
• The reappearance of the stain, called ‘wicking’, is quite normal and frequent. You will have to repeat the whole procedure again and again till the carpet gets free of all the stains.

Precautionary measures to be taken

Your carpet may become totally discoloured if you use the following chemical substances as detergents.

1. Bleaches
2. Furniture polishes
3. Acne medications and skin ointments or creams
4. Plant foods, fertilizers and insecticides
5. All types of cleaners for bathrooms, toilet bowls, tubs and tiles, oven and drain.      

Though your carpet appears neat and clean and does not get dirty over the months, you must get it thoroughly cleaned after 12 to 18 months as a part of regular maintenance.