12 Tips to Maintain and Extend the Life of Your Carpets
How to Maintain and extend the life of your carpets is the most common question we get every day when we are out there cleaning carpets. This 12 proven tips will ensure your flooring investment is taken care of. Just Follow this tips and your carpets will last over 10 years.
Knowing what Kind of Carpets You Have.
The first tip for you is to know what kind of carpets you have at home. Let me explain to you what I mean with this. Let’s say you have wool carpet. Wool carpet lasts much longer than some other ones. But if you spill something, there is a good chance that wool will absorb that spill, and it will be a little harder to clean. If you have nylon carpeting, it will resist a lot more wear and tear, and you can have it in the living room, places where you will have a lot of traffic. That’s the reason you need to know what kind of carpeting you have.
Use Outdoor Floor Mats
My other tip will be floor mats. I recommend all my clients to have outdoor floor mats in front of all their entryway doors. And here’s the reason. When we’re coming from the outside, our shoes are full of dirt and soil. Having floor mats help us to collect all that dust and contamination. That way, we’re not bringing in the dust.
The other tip will be, if you don’t want to have those floor mats or if you do but you want to go an extra step, to go ahead and take your shoes off. Do I do it? No, I don’t. But when I’m in those homes and I see that they’re leaving the shoes by the door, usually those carpets last clean much longer, and the life of the carpet is way up there, 10, 15 years.
Use Area Rugs indoors for High Traffic Areas
Your Next tip will be to have area rugs on your traffic areas or where you seat the most. What I mean with this, let’s say in a hallway, I’ve seen many times people having runners. Having Runners and Area Rugs where you walk most of the time, will help to reduces the wear and tear of your fiber. We don’t see it but walking on top of soiled areas will destroy your carpets.
Also Having this area rugs in those rooms where we spend most of the time seating or walking through will help to reduce the wear and tear of your carpets. Sometimes is easier to replace an area rug the regular wall to wall carpeting.
Rotate your Furniture
The other tip will be to rotate your furniture. Usually, I see issues in living rooms where we have the couch right in front of the TV. That area will wear out pretty quick. Moving and rotating the couch, the chair that you love, the one where you sit every day to watch TV will help to extend the life of that area. Of course, you don’t like to move that chair because you are used to be on that spot, but if you want to extend the life of your carpet, you should rotate your furniture plus every time you rotate the furniture, it looks like you have a new design. And then it will make you feel better.
Spot and Spill Cleaning
My other tip for you will be spot and spills cleaning. When you spill juice, wine, or anything else, please run to the spot and clean it right away. If you’re leaving a spot there for a day or two, it will be harder to clean. Plus, I seen it many time, and I have done it. Sometimes we get busy and we forget to come back and clean it. If you’re leaving a spot for a long time, there’s a good chance that that spot will become a stain. A stain is something that many professionals can not remove including ourselves. We clean the spots but not the stains.
If the spot you need to clean got hard because you could get to it when it happened, you need to wet it that way it will get soft and you can work on it.
Vacuuming more Frequently
Next tip for you will be vacuuming more frequently. As always, we’re busy and we have a lot of things to do in our life. We forget to vacuum our carpets. We should vacuum our carpets at least twice a week. When you’re vacuuming, please don’t forget to vacuum the edges of your carpeting, if you don’t do it, you will end up with filtration lines.
I have another video and article where I explain what are those filtration lines and how you can avoid them. One of the steps will be vacuuming the edges of your carpeting. When you’re vacuuming, please don’t forget to vacuum the steps of your stairway. Ask yourself when was the last time you vacuumed your steps?
When we go into a home or if you look at yours, you will see that your steps are wearing out very quickly. One of the reason is because we don’t vacuum enough. Dry soil, the dust work as sandpaper. It will cut down the fibers of your, uh, carpeting. Make sure you vacuum enough that you pick up a lot of dust.
Knowing what Kind of Pets you have?
My other tip is knowing what kind of pets you have or if you’re getting one, you need to know if they have short hair or long hair. If they have long hair, there’s a good chance that you have to vacuum your carpets more often to pick up that hair that is in the carpeting.
Also, when you have pets, make sure you train them, that you take them out often and give them plenty of time to be outside and do their necessity. That way they don’t come back and have an accident on your carpeting.
Supplemental Cleaning Tools
My other tip for you will a supplemental cleaning tool. What do I mean with this? Sometimes we don’t have time, and there are tools out there that you can buy. And I’m talking about those automatic vacuum cleaners that you can just push a button, and it goes out, it vacuums everything, it rotates around the house, and it comes back to recharge. Also, if you have kids, you know that no matter what, they will spill something. Go ahead and go out and buy a shampooer, you will need to do a spot cleaning more often than some other people. You need to be proactive when you are taking care of your flooring, when you’re taking care of your home.
Hire a Professional Carpet Cleaner
My other tip for you will be to hire a professional to clean your carpets within 18 months. Most of the carpet manufacturers recommend hiring a Carpet Cleaning Company that is IICRC certified because they know how to clean your carpets professionally. IICRC Certified Carpet cleaning technician is trained and educated in carpet cleaning techniques. They know how to do professional spot cleaning as well as cleaning.
We’re certified, and it takes around a week to go through the training and learn what to do. When You have a Professional Carpet Cleaning Company at home you should also ask the if they have training on area rugs. If they do also have them to clean your area rugs.
If they don’t Hire a Professional Oriental Rug Cleaning Company to clean those area rugs you have on your high traffic areas.
Also, when you hire a professional, I always recommend to go ahead and get fiber protector. That’s our other tip for you. Having protector, it makes your carpet last longer, it cleans much easier the next time when you’re vacuuming, it’s much easier ’cause the protector works as an invisible shield that it gets around your fibers and the soil won’t embed into the fibers.
Change You Furnace Air Filter
It’s important to remember that you have to change the air filters in your furnace. Why do you need to change the air filters? Very simple. The dust that is in your house, it goes through and returns back through the vents. The Air filter is the tool in between. It’s, it’s what collects all the dust. Having good and clean filters, it helps to collet all that dust that you have everywhere. Dust, as I mentioned, work as sandpaper on the carpeting. It sands down.
When you walk on dusty hardwood floors or tile, you can feel, and many times you hear how it’s scratching your floors. Having a clean home, it helps to extend the life of your carpeting.
I hope my tips help you to extend and maintain your carpets. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment on this video or article. If you need any assistance with the maintenance of your flooring you can contact us at 502-365-6779 for a Free Consultation and Quote.
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