There’s nothing better than sinking your feet into a cozy new carpet. They instantly make your house look and feel homely, and are the perfect floor covering when you love your creature comforts.
However unlike wood, stone, or vinyl flooring, carpets and rugs can be easily ruined, and they’re not cheap to replace. Food or drink spills, pet toileting accidents, or muddy feet can all leave your beautiful new carpet or rug looking (and smelling) worse for wear.
But fear not, if you’ve had a carpet disaster here are a few of the ways you can put it right.
Blot, Don’t Scrub
If the stain has just happened and is still wet, you will want to get as much of the excess liquid up as possible. Do this by blotting, not rubbing or scrubbing- although there are some exceptions which are listed on goodhousekeeping.com.
You need to be careful not to spread the stain further and deeper into the fibers of the carpet or push it down to the subfloor. Use absorbent material like a terry teatowel or hand towel or kitchen paper.
Water Soluble Stains
Alcohol, fruit, washable ink, even bodily fluids like vomit and blood are all water soluble. This means they can be treated with a simple solution of a tablespoon of ammonia and one cup of water. If you know what your carpet is made out of, there’s a stronger solution you can use.
For example, solution-dyed carpets such as polypropylene can be cleaned with a mixture of one part chlorine bleach to five parts water.
Bleach will harm other kinds of materials though do you need to be sure, you should always test a patch in an area that won’t be noticed first. Even water-soluble stains can be very tricky to get up, if nothing seems to be shifting it then you could call in the big guns.
A professional cleaning company like centralhomeservices.com.au will have the equipment and products needed to get rid of these kinds of problems.
Fat, Oil, Wax and Urine
These kinds of spills and stains can be more tricky to remove since they’re not water soluble. But if you’ve had these kinds of things spilled on your carpet there are ways you can put it right.
For fat, oil and wax, place a paper towel over the area and run a warm iron over the top. This should melt and absorb into the paper.
Things like glue and chewing gum could be removed with baby oil, carefully moisten around the area until the substance becomes loose and slides off, then remove the oil using the previous method.
Ug Textiles
According to spotremoval.coit.com/how-to-remove-urine-from-carpet urine is one of the hardest materials to get rid of, this is because salts are left behind when it dries.
These will continue to smell, especially so when the area gets warm or moist. Blot as much up as possible, and then clean with a non-bleached based detergent.
If you have a carpet cleaner, flushing out as much of the urine salts as possible gives you the best chance of removing it altogether, but be careful not to wet the area too much and spread it further.
In severe cases, you might need to cut out the section of carpet and underlay, thoroughly clean the subfloor and then replace that square with new carpet.
