One of the most important things we can do to maintain a clean and healthy home, as well as make our carpeting last longer and look better is to v acuum, vacuum, vacuum!! Not one of most people’s favorite things to do (even we admit we don’t love the vacuuming part of our job!)–it is, however SUPER IMPORTANT. Our carpets act as air filters in our rooms and trap dust that would normally be floating around in the air. This is a good thing, as long as we vacuum routinely to keep the “filter” clean.
Shaw Industries, the world’s largest manufacturer of carpets recommends rooms with light traffic be vacuumed once weekly and the traffic lanes 2x a week.
In heavy traffic areas, Shaw recommends vacuuming traffic areas DAILY and the entire area 2x weekly. In heavily soiled areas, we should make at least 5-7 passes of the vacuum, changing direction occasionally to help reduce matting.
Don’t forget to change the bag often so vacuum suction won’t be impaired…and clean the filter if you have one. Many people who don’t like vacuuming may do so more often when using the type machine with a clear dirt receptacle so they can see exactly what they’re getting out of the carpets. And don’t forget to vacuum the area rugs–hand knotted orientals can hide pounds and pounds of dirt and still look great. When we bring in Orientals to clean in our shop, we not only vacuum, but use a commercial rug duster that gets piles of sand out before we wet clean them.
If you use carpet powders, DON’T!! But, of course some people will and super vacuuming is essential—-once the perfume wears off, the powder then absorbs any odors and what was intended to remedy a smelly situation actually ends up making it worse.
When we don’t vacuum, the dirt and sand acts like sandpaper on our carpet fibers, taking away the lustre and changing the appearance (think what your waxed car would look like if you rubbed sandpaper on it) and grinding away at the fibers—leading to carpets wearing out faster and looking bad sooner.
Often, when we go to clean carpets, homeowners will tell us that some rooms don’t need cleaning because they never get any foot traffic even though they haven’t been cleaned in a few years—of course we couldn’t go several years without dusting our furniture–well, we could, but you wouldn’t! All that dust has also settled on our carpets.
Of course All Pro Carpet Cleaners of Deland, FL vacuums before we clean your carpeting and we encourage you to get out that vacuum now and have fun!
