Rugs are a comfortable and fancy accessory for the home, but only if they are clean. Many people, however, wonder how often one deep clean a carpet and area rugs should? If you also wonder how often is too often or too seldom, read this article, and you will become an expert about this question.
Many people vacuum their house and even pay attention to also reach below furniture, such as vacuuming under the bed. Nevertheless, they wonder why the home is full of dust again soon after. Share useful tips like this and immediately start getting more visibility on your content with the help of Spotifystorm. Buy Spotify followers and get started now.
Read this article, and you find out why you should deep clean your carpets and area rugs and how often.
Why Do I Need To Deep Clean My Carpets And Area Rugs?
It is common for us to vacuum the floors and wipe the furniture from dust frequently, but many people do not realize that dust and debris can climb deeply into the bottom of a carpet.
If those carpets are not becoming deeply cleaned, then the dust will stick there forever, making your carpet less attractive in the long run. In addition, if dust sits deep in the carpet, every time you step on it, some dust particles are released back into the air.
Therefore, your home will never be completely dust-free. People often wonder why their home is full of dust soon after vacuuming. The reason is that your carpets or area rugs are releasing particles back into the air if not deep cleaned regularly.
How Often To Clean My Carpet And Area Rug?
Many rug sellers recommend doing a deep cleaning at least once a year. However, it is not that easy to say how often one should get deep clean a carpet, as this depends on many factors.
Read on, and I am telling you for every situation exactly when and how often it is best to deep clean a carpet or area rug.
Single Or Couple Household
There is comparatively little dust accumulation if you live in a two, or three-room apartment alone or together with your partner. Therefore, deep cleaning once a year can be enough, especially if you vacuum at least once a week.
However, keep in mind that if you often have friends coming over, you host parties, or plan to get children or pets, you certainly need to clean more often. Read further on to see how often you should perform a deep cleaning in each situation.
If an accident happens, such as spilled drinks, you should clean them up immediately. It is a good idea to have always had a carpet cleaner spray at home for such a case.
Families With Children
Children like to play on the floors, and a soft and fluffy shag carpet, for example, is a much more adored place for playing than the cold, hardwood floors. This means that they have a face very close to the carpets.
Already out of that reason, it is highly recommended to keep your carpets and area rugs very clean. To achieve this, in addition to frequent vacuuming, it is recommended to deep clean all your carpets at least twice a year.
This way, you reduce the risk that children will catch some bacteria or dirt from your carpets while playing on them. The best time to do the deep cleaning is in spring and autumn.
After the summer, children are, due to the weather, returning to play inside mostly. Hence, their exposure to the carpets is then strongest. Therefore, it is best to give the carpets a deep cleaning right before the “playing at home” season.
During winter, we bring a lot of dirt into our homes. Streets are often wet and muddy, and we carry those particles into our homes, even if we remove shoes. Therefore, spring has always been a great time to do a full house cleaning, and hence deeply cleaning your carpets fits well into that period.
Pets And Carpets
Do you have pets in your home? If so, some people might have already suggested you get rid of rugs entirely as it is not hygienic. Well, they might have some arguments here.
As pets, such as dogs or cats, unlike us humans, do not have shoes that they can remove when coming home; they carry almost anything from outside into your home. This can be dust, mold, dead insects, rotten leaves, and even other animals’ excrements.
In addition, pets carry something called pet dander. These are tiny little specks consisting of dead skin cells. As they are microscopic small, the danger will dive down deeply to the bottom of the carpet. With every step on the rug, it will move deeper and deeper until it lands so deep that it will not be possible anymore to remove it.
Depending on how many pets you have and how much they move over the carpets or your area rug, cleaning the carpets three to four times a year is recommended. This avoids that dander or other debris can deeply move into your carpets.
Furthermore, a free carpet from such tiny particles will contribute to both a comfortable feeling when walking on it and a nice, clean air quality. Hence, if you have many pets and need to deep clean your carpet often, you might benefit from a steam cleaner to treat pet stains or a specialized carpet cleaner for pets.
Cigarette Smoke
This factor is often forgotten, especially as smokers are used to the traces and do not notice them anymore. Cigarette smoke contains various gasses where some of which are known to cause cancer.
These gasses can be absorbed by dust particles and sooner or later land in your carpets, where they can continue to release toxic traces over a long period.
Therefore, if you smoke heavily in your home, even if windows are open, you are doing well by deeply cleaning carpets or area rugs every three months. If you occasionally smoke and jump on the balcony for doing that, every six months can also be sufficient.
Should you be annoyed by the nicotine smell in your rooms, I have another article to tell you how to remove cigarette smell from walls and ceilings.
How To Know When It Is Time For The Next Cleaning?
Now you have an approximate idea of how often to clean your carpets. However, every rug is different, and so is every household. Hence, in addition to setting up a schedule, it is also good to check the carpets from time to time.
Smelling Test
You can start by bringing your nose close to the carpet and smell. Make sure you do not have any scented candles or plants nearby that could distort the scent. Check if you can smell any unpleasant odor.
You can get very close so that your face is touching the carpet fibers already. Also, make sure to move your head across the entire carpet, as sometimes, selected spots become dirty much sooner than the rest of the rug.
Scrubbing Test
Get a white, clean brush or a sponge. Soak it up with water and a little soap, and then gently scrub on the carpet fibers. After a few seconds, stop and check how the brush looks. If it is not white anymore or contains dust or dirt pieces, it might be time for a full cleaning.
A little more effort, therefore more precise, is the spot clean check. You continue to brush a certain spot of the carpet more carefully. After shampooing, you soak away the shampoo foam with a wet sponge and wait for the carpet spot to dry.
If once fully dried, the color at that spot is brighter than the overall carpet; you also do a deep cleaning.
Hand Rubbing Test
A very simple method to check whether a deep cleaning is overdue is the hand rub test. You place the palm of your hand on the carpet and then move it in a circular path for at least ten seconds.
If your hand is dirty after that, you have the evidence that you need to clean your carpet deeply as soon as possible. Make sure to wash your hands after you have completed the test.
Allergies
If you suffer from allergies, you should always observe your allergy symptoms. For example, if there is no pollen season at the moment, but you develop allergic symptoms, it could be that pollen is hidden somewhere in the fibers of your carpets.
It is then a good idea to perform a deep cleaning of all carpets to get rid of pollen and improve your air quality. If you are allergic to pollen, wait with the deep cleaning until the end of the pollen season, so you have a pollen-free home as soon as the particles stop flying.
To avoid that pollen can start to embed in your carpet, you need to vacuum your home constantly. While this would be very annoying, a robot vacuum could lead to that job for you.
Is It Better To Clean By Myself Or Hire A Cleaner?
The decision whether to have your carpets professionally cleaned by certified service or doing this yourself mostly depends on your personal preference.
It can certainly be time-consuming to do that by yourself, and therefore some people prefer a service to pick up the carpets and return them fully cleaned a couple of days later.
In addition, especially large area rugs are difficult to lift, and it can be a real challenge to find a good place for them to hang and dry; therefore, calling in a professional for huge area rugs can pay off.
Besides that, keep in mind that some carpet dealers or manufacturers, which provide you with a long warranty, require you to deep clean your carpets in fixed intervals. If so, you cannot do that by yourself as you need to have proof.
Professional cleaning companies are familiar with those warranty terms. They will fill out warranty certificates or service sheets to have the documentation if you need to use a warranty policy later.
On the other hand, let me warn you that some professional cleaning services are not working well, are overpriced, and there are even scammers who disappear with your carpets. If you have decided to get help, collect as much information about the company, such as reviews or how many years they are in business, first before hiring them.
Also, it is important to check about the price before hiring a cleaner, as this can quickly become very expensive. In general, it is not worth having smaller carpets and machine-made carpets cleaned professionally, as the value of the rug cannot increase.
Extremely precious carpets can sometimes be in better hands if experts are taking care of the cleaning. However, read the company policy about their liability in case something goes wrong.
What Is The Average Lifespan Of A Carpet?
As with everything, there is always a huge spectrum regarding quality available on the market. Hence, I cannot tell you that your carpet will survive for 15 years, simply because I do not know what type of carpet you have and how you treat it.
Handmade carpets of excellent quality, for example, can last you for your entire life and even longer if taken care of well. This means, if you do not walk on it with shoes, frequently vacuum it, and deep clean it regularly, there is a high probability that you can inherit this carpet from your children.
Machine knotted carpets, especially those in the lower price segment, are often manufactured in a mass production environment, and hence there is less attention to quality. Those carpets can last for some time between 15 and 20 years.
Nevertheless, if you treat your carpets well and clean them regularly, using a proper carpet cleaner, there is a huge chance that your carpet will look pretty even longer.
What Happens If I Do Not Want To Deep Clean My Carpets?
Unfortunately, many people still believe that frequent vacuuming can be enough. While you need to vacuum your carpet regularly, you also need to perform additional deep cleanings from time to time. Not deep cleaning your carpets can have serious consequences. There are various health risks that dirty carpets can create.
If you do not have a vacuum, there are other options for cleaning a carpet without a vacuum.
Problems With Respiration
Carpets can decrease the air quality in a home if they constantly release old dust or dirt. Every time you step on a rug, your foot causes minor vibrations in the fibers, and when they shake, dust can become set free and swirled up into the air again.
Even more problematic than dust is various microorganisms such as mold, mites, or bacteria. In the bottom of the carpet, they often find a great habitat as the embedded dirt provides a sturdy base for them to grow, while the fibers cause a comfortable temperature level.
Vacuuming does not harm those organisms at all. As they can only be removed with a deep cleaning, it is extremely important not to neglect that extra effort.
The microorganisms paired with a strong level of dust and embedded dirt can cause breathing problems to children, seniors, and healthy adults. Furthermore, scientists have proven that dirty rugs support respiratory diseases such as asthma and can be the primary reason for their cause.
Skin Irritations
A dirty carpet often is a gateway for skin-irritating organisms. Tiny insects such as fleas, bed bugs, bacteria, mold, or other harmful organisms may grow perfectly in the bottom layer of your carpet. This undoubtedly causes problems when getting in touch with the carpet fibers.
Children are especially exposed as they tend to crawl and play on the floor, hence being very close to the carpet. However, adults are also getting in touch, for example, when walking bare feet.
Furthermore, organisms such as microbes or mold can emit traces from them into the air. Hence, our skin can easily become in contact with those irritants, even without touching the carpet.
For people with rather sensitive skin, this can cause severe problems. Hence, you should follow the cleaning recommendations from above and do not ignore deep cleaning.
Stress
Multiple studies have shown that people feel more stressed when they live in dirty environments.
This can become quite clear, for example, when imagining our bedroom. If you enter the bedroom and find a cozy, well-made bed, the floors are clean, and the air feels good, you feel easy to fall asleep.
If, however, you enter your bedroom and the bed looks like a real mess, the floor is covered with old laundry, empty candy packaging, and you find a lot of hair in the bedsheets, it can become challenging to relax and find sleep.
The same applies to your entire home, including the carpets. Once you know that your carpets are fully clean, you can relax much easier, as you feel more comfortable living in a clean home.
If, on the other hand, your mind is constantly thinking that you have not cleaned your carpet for a while, wondering about how many bacteria may have started to grow there, then it will be much harder to find peace in your own home.
Bonus Tip
I hope that I have given you some clarity on how often to clean your carpets and area rugs in your home with this article.
You could learn how often to clean carpets in various types of households when it is good to clean them, know when a carpet is dirty, and why it is important to deep clean your carpets. As bonus advice, I recommend you enforce a no-shoes policy in your home. This way, you keep a lot of dirt away from your carpets and can seize the time for the next deep cleaning.
I hope you can find my guide useful. Let me know how and when you clean your carpets and whether you think my suggested cleaning schedule works for your home. Maybe you have discovered something worth sharing with others, so please drop a comment below.
