Carpet Care Tips, Tricks & Shortcuts
December 21, 2011, By Tom McNulty 0 comments
Arrgh! I spent the afternoon deep-cleaning three floors-worth of white carpet with one of those clunky, heavy, noisy, hard-to-maneuver and only semi-effective rental machines from Home Depot. Now my back's killing me, and I'll never get that four hours back.
But a man's got to do a major carpet cleaning a few times a year. I chose this DIY method for financial reasons: $25 for the rental, $19 for a gallon of detergent (with enough left over for next time). Elbow grease: free.
The alternatives are:
- Don't ever spill anything on your carpet—a virtual impossibility if you live life with any measure of gusto. If you're not blessed with good hands, you'll have to give up fine wine, excellent food (nachos, pizza, etc.), and your bone-loving dog.
- Viewing a carpet stained with coffee spills, dog bone grease, pizza splotches (rule: dropped pieces never land face-up), and other viscous matter. Sooner or later, this becomes unbearable.
- Spending $300 or more on a professional service like Coit or Stanley Steemer.
Number three is actually advisable now and then...for a special occasion, or when you've got the extra cash. Services do a great job, they're quick, they move and clean underneath furniture...the whole cannoli.
Strategic MANeuver: call them and say, "Can you do two rooms and two stairways for $200?" Or whatever you can afford. They'll say yes. When they arrive, chat up the crew, offer them coffee, tell them you're going to tell their boss what a great job they're doing, etc. Then ask them if they can just do "that hallway" or "this section," whatever, as long as they're here. Chances are, they will.
Some "use-'em-now" Tips and Tricks
Yeah, short cuts. That's what we're here for.
Treating stains
My book, "Clean Like a Man," has several pages of precise directions, gleaned from the world's finest housekeeping books, on what ingredients to use to treat specific stains, from beer, coffee and cola to barbecue/pasta/pizza sauces, greasy foods, gravy, mustard, pet urine and vomit.
No, it's not pretty, not at all. Most treatments involve lots of solutions: water mixed with white vinegar, dish detergent, isopropyl alcohol, ammonia and OxiClean.
But in truth, you can effectively treat most stains by first blotting up as much as you can, then spraying on plain water and blotting to see if that works. It probably won't, so then spray the spot with Zep High Traffic Carpet Cleaner, rub it in with your fingers, then blot or rub briskly with a white cotton cloth (definitely cotton).
My rationale: the Zep stuff is specifically formulated for treating stains. And you never see janitors messing around with home-made cleaning concoctions.
Also: blotting repeatedly/endlessly really sucks. Instead, I often just toss a cloth down on the Zep-drenched stain, then roll a bowling ball around on it to save my wrists and sanity. Very effective.
NEXT: Overall stain treating advice
