Despite your best efforts to keep your carpets clean, they often become the victim of spills, stains, dust and dirt. You cannot opt for professional cleaning every time you spot some stain on your carpet. Hence, the best way to deal with it is to have some basic knowledge on carpet cleaning techniques.
However, there is no single cleaning technique that works out for every stain or spot. Different stains have to be treated differently. Therefore it is important to determine what sort of stain you are dealing with and the right solution to treat it.
Following are different carpet cleaning techniques that could help you treat different kinds of stains or spots like a professional.
Water-based stains
Water-based stains are easiest to clean, if you could treat them immediately. These stains can be from natural products like milk, fizzy drinks, jelly, cherries or berries. The best way to tackle them is to attack them with water again. Take some warm water, add little detergent or white vinegar – slowly pour it on the stain and clean with a cloth. There will be some troublesome water marks, which leave a mark even after cleaning with water; for such stains use soda water or tonic water.
Alcoholic beverages
Alcoholic beverages like beer and wine leave stains when left unattended. Club soda is an effective solution to treat such stains. To do this, you first need to blot the area with soda on a cloth. If that doesn’t work, mix equal portions of water and vinegar, spray it on the area and leave it for 10-15 minutes. Once it is well soaked, press a sponge over the area to remove it. You may need to repeat the process until the stain vanishes.
Once it is gone, rinse the area with warm water, using a hand brush the carpet strands in their natural direction, place paper towels over the area and put some weight. These towels will absorb the dampness. Leave them till the carpet becomes dry.
Oil stains
It’s little interesting to remove oily stains from the carpet. You just need to place an old cloth over the area, take an iron, adjust it to medium heat and skim over the cloth. The heat helps the oil residue to transfer from the carpet to the cloth.
Gum and candy
When you have kids in the house, candy stains and sticky gums on the carpet are quite common. Don’t panic the moment you see a gum baldy stuck to your carpet, simply take some ice cubes from your freezer, place them on the gum for at least 30 seconds or until it freezes. Once it is frozen, lift it up with a spoon and cut the strands of the carpet as close to the gum as possible, so that the spot won’t be noticeable.
Coming to candy stains, if there is any melted candy that got stuck to the carpet, gently scrape it with a blunt knife or brush. Then take a sponge dipped in mild soap solution and clean the area. While doing it, make sure you are not leaving any traces of sugar, which may attract dirt. Once the candy is removed blot the area with dry cloth or paper towel.
Grease stains
Grease is one of the toughest stains to remove. However, it becomes easy if you have the right cleaning solution. Well, you don’t have to buy anything for this; you just need that grease-cutting dish washing detergent.
This detergent cuts the grease on your carpet similar to how it removes grease from your dishes. Make a solution with the detergent and water, fill it in a spray bottle and spray it on the stain. Then blot it with clean cloth or paper towel. Repeat it till you see it clean. For larger stains, you may need to do it multiple times.
Blood stains
Some accidents like a cut on your finger or an accidental fall may result in a blood stain over your expensive carpet. But don’t worry too much hydrogen peroxide is there for your rescue.
Before using it directly, you first need to clean the blood stain with some water and mild detergent and scrape it if it is gets dried. Then apply hydrogen peroxide directly to the stain. You can see it foaming the moment it touches the blood. Once it is done, dab it with clean cloth.
Wax drops
You can remove wax drops the same way you remove oily stains. Place a cloth over the wax drops and iron on the top to warm it. Once it is warm you can easily scrape the wax using a butter knife. But don’t use the iron for more than 30 seconds, else you may run the risk of burning the carpet.
