Clean Carpet is as Good as New (Almost)

I can decide whether or not to buy a pair of shoes the second I see them. I knew in a heartbeat which color car I wanted (horizon blue metallic). It takes me no time at all to choose a movie to rent or an entrée to order.

If you ask for my preference, you’ll very seldom hear me say, “I don’t know.”

Yet it took me five full weeks to pick out a carpet for my home office. I worried and wrung my hands and researched and visited the carpet store about three times a week for more than a month. Eventually, the salesmen started scattering when they saw me coming; I was the woman who was going to look, take up their time, ask a million questions—but never buy.

I eventually did buy a lovely wall-to-wall Berber carpet in an neutral, oatmealy shade with flecks of green and beige. That was 13 years ago. Even though it has held up well, it’s really showing its age lately. But I don’t have enough courage to go through the torture of picking out a replacement.

So last week I did something I’ve never done before: I called a professional carpet cleaning service to come over and take a stab at reviving the limp pile, removing the many cat-accident stains, restoring the color and appearance, and refreshing the look and feel and smell.

And now, you’d never know that carpet is 13 years old.

It’s not that I never cleaned the carpet in all this time. I dragged home one of those rent-a-steamers from Giant every couple of years, but I suspect I mostly dumped water onto the rug without extracting much of the embedded grime and cat hair. I also vacuum it every week or so and spot-clean every time my sweet little Whiskers snacks on the silk flowers I keep on the coffee table and then spits them up all over the floor.

But nothing has ever given my carpet a facelift like the guys from Stanley Steemer who spent more than an hour working their deep-clean (pet-safe) chemicals into the weave and extracting all things yucky with their super-suction hoses.

So I’ve decided to keep my Berber forever, and call in the carpet cavalry every year to clean up after kitty and me. If you’re a new-carpet wimp like I am, you might benefit from a few things I learned during my carpet-cleaning epiphany: 

• Carpet manufacturers recommend that you get a pro to clean the floor covering every six months (not once every 13 years!). Carpets catch an awful lot of dirt, pollutants and allergens, so you can’t keep it too clean.
• Vacuuming once a week isn’t nearly enough. It turns out that vacuuming several times a week is the best way to keep dust, dirt and oils from settling into a carpet.
• It seems like vacuuming and steam-cleaning would weaken the carpet, but regular maintenance can actually lengthen its life. Letting dirt particles set in the carpet is like rubbing sandpaper on the fibers, causing premature aging.
• Rubbing a stain to remove it can force the grime deeper into the carpet, making it hard for even the pros to remove. Their advice: blot.
• Your vacuum cleaner can make your indoor air dirtier if it blows the dirt and dust around rather than trapping it inside its own container. The solution: Invest in a vacuum with a sealed HEPA filter, which is designed to remove 99.97 percent of dust, dander and other allergens as they pass through it.
• If you have cats like I do, consider trading your old vacuum cleaner for a “pet lover’s” model that is designed to pick up pet hair and dander and to remove pet messes from carpets, stairs and upholstery.

And maybe you, too, can spare yourself from the agony that is carpet shopping—at least for a few more years.

Sharon O’Malley is a freelance writer who has lived in College Park for 13 years.