How clean are your carpets? Maybe you vacuum once a week. All that work and it seems as though they just get dirtier and dirtier. You remember how your carpets looked when they were brand new. It felt great, the house smelled wonderful, but now, just a couple of years later, they are looking old. You wonder just how much longer you can tolerate it, and with such a significant investment, you expected them to last longer than this.
A professional carpet cleaning is recommended yearly.
In reality, in a perfect situation, homeowners would have their carpets professionally cleaned every six months. That would not only keep them looking their best, but it would also protect them and help them maximize longevity.
However, most people don’t do this, even though coming out of winter and then heading out of summer are some of the best times to get them done. Once a year, at a minimum, is going to help increase the life expectancy of most carpets.
Another thing that will help is to pay attention to commonly overlooked issues.
The most common issue many homeowners don’t realize is dust and dirt that collects on other surfaces. The most common areas that get overlooked are along the door frames, moldings, and baseboards, or heating and cooling areas.
If you have forced hot air, dust that collects in the registers is going to get pumped out every time the system turns on. If you don’t wipe down the moldings over your doors and windows, if you don’t wipe down the windowsills and other surfaces, even though you might not see the dust and debris building up on them, trust us, it’s there.
Every time a door is closed, a light breeze blows through, or the air is stirred up in any way, that dust and dirt will float up and then eventually settle back down, usually on your furniture and carpets. Over time, it’s going to get trapped in the fiber, work its way deeper, and begin to make your carpets look dirtier.
A simple wiping down of the surfaces every couple of weeks can help, but don’t overestimate how important a professional carpet cleaning can be.
