All posts by Jordan Milligan

How Often Do You Need To Clean Your Carpets?

If I could get a pound each time I got asked that, I would….you know what I mean.

The truth is – everything needs to be cleaned at some point – no question. However, some things need to be cleaned more often than others. To take some extreme examples, you ought to change (and wash!) your underpants every day but the inside of the oven only needs cleaning once in a blue moon, usually when someone is moving house or when the level of grease has built up to the point where it’s becoming a fire hazard. Then there’s everything else. Where do carpets come in the spectrum of things? How often do you need to clean a carpet?

Answering this depends on whether you’re talking about vacuuming, deep carpet cleaning or stain removal. All of these have different schedules and there are a host of factors influencing how often a carpet needs to be cleaned.

Factors That Affect Carpet Cleaning Frequency

When deciding on how often you need to clean your carpets, no matter what type of cleaning we’re talking about, some things will get the carpets quite dirty and expose them to more dirt. If any of these situations ring true for your, then you’ll have to increase the frequency at which your carpets are cleaned:

• lots of foot traffic across a particular patch of carpet
• situations where people can’t take their shoes off at the door before walking on the carpet (e.g. in an office or in a shop)
• pets in the home – and some pets shed more hair and skin particles than others!
• homes that use log fires as a heating source (logs will inevitably shed bits of bark and sawdust on the carpet)
• people in the house with long hair – if this is your situation, you know what I’m talking about
• people in the house who have problems with asthma and allergies
• craft-crazy people, especially if their craft involves glitter
• small children who crawl on carpets as well as dropping food on them
• carpets with deep piles
• pale coloured carpets

The more of the items on this list you can tick off, the more often you’ll have to call out the professional carpet cleaners in Archway (ahem, hello, I am here) and the more often you’ll have to get out the vacuum cleaner.

How Often Should You Vacuum?

To some extent, this is up to you. I know that in my house, it sometimes seems like the vacuum cleaner could be running non-stop. As soon as someone has finished vacuuming, it’s like there are little gremlins that walk around behind them sprinkling dust, hair and more over the place. All the same, regular vacuuming is important and is your first port of call for keeping carpets in good order. Vacuuming might not be able to remove all of the dirt but it will remove some of it and it will also help to keep thinks like fleas and dust mites down.

I would say that the bare minimum frequency for vacuuming is once a week. However, if you want to, you can do the job more often. Daily isn’t too often if this is what you prefer or if the people in your house are particularly grubby. You probably also ought to vacuum after doing any activity that has involved getting things on the carpet, such as crafting activities… or if someone’s marched into the house with lawnmower clippings all over them.

In fact, vacuuming the carpets is a good way to give the whole house an instant lift. Do it as often as you feel like it! If you don’t feel like it, then one way to motivate yourself is to get down on that carpet and either do a few floor exercises like planks (if you feel energetic) or some deep breathing (if you need to relax). You’ll quickly come face to face with what the carpets are like…

How Often Do Carpets Need To Be Deep Cleaned?

Deep cleaning, as the name suggests, gets right down into the carpet fibres and gets all the dirt, sticky resides and odours out of there. Because it’s such a thorough job, it doesn’t need to be done as often as vacuuming.

The gold standard for getting carpets professionally deep cleaned is once a year. This is what is recommended by carpet manufacturers, as it really helps extend the life of the carpet by removing harsh grit. A lot of people like to make carpet cleaning part of their spring cleaning routine, although you don’t have to wait until spring to call on the carpet cleaning company in your area! Any time of year will do, really, although the weather does affect the drying time.

In the case of heirloom rugs and carpets (kilim, Turkish carpets, Persian rugs and the like), the warranty often includes a requirement to get the item cleaned by a professional once a year. In the case of these valuable and beautiful rugs, dry cleaning is a must to prevent the colours and the fibres from being damaged, and that’s something that only a professional with the right equipment (and know-how) can do.

Some places need to have their carpets deep cleaned more often. Offices, for example, need to get the carpets deep cleaned more often than private homes because there are a lot more feet tracking across the carpets for longer every day – and those feet will have shoes on them that have just come off the streets. One can go barefoot at home, but not at work! Having mats down at the doorways can help collect the worst of the dirt, mud and rain that come in off the street but even so, office carpets will probably need more frequent deep cleaning. In fact, commercial premises often arrange not just for regular carpet cleaning but also for regular mat cleaning.

If there is someone in your household with bad asthma and allergy problems, then deep cleaning carpets needs to be done very often to kill those pesky dust mites that cause so many problems. Some people in this situation opt for not having carpets at all but having hard floors soften with a few rugs (jute rugs are particularly good in this situation, as they repel dust rather than hanging onto it). However, even these rugs will need some deep cleaning now and again. Steam cleaning is best in the case of allergy sufferers, as the heat involved in this process will be high enough to kill the wretched little critters.

In the case of allergies, it’s probably a wise idea to get upholstery cleaned at the same time as the carpet, as these also provide a home for dust mites. Ditto mattresses and pillows – they’ll need deep cleaning as well. A good professional carpet cleaning company will be able to do all of these in one session, making it easier for you.

Stain Removal

Stain removal, of course, is a different kettle of fish altogether and sometimes actually involves fish (ah, that great chippy at 657 Holloway Road Archway, London N19 5SE). There’s no denying that getting stains cleaned properly is important and it will need to be done regularly. However, it’s impossible to plan and schedule stain removals for the simple reason that nobody plans to spill coffee, red wine or curry on the carpets! Mind you, if you have learned the hard way that office parties or other parties inevitably leave wine stains on the carpet, you could pre-book a stain removal expert to come in the day after!

With all stains, acting quickly is the most important thing. This means that if you have spilled something or discovered your toddler’s “artwork” or a patch of pee left by the new puppy, then you need to deal with that stain as soon as you can so that it doesn’t spread or become permanent. Most good professional carpet cleaning companies offer emergency stain treatment services for just this reason!

Why Carpets?

OK, it’s been a while since I posted anything on my (new) blog. I know, you crave to know what’s been going on with my new challenge (cleaning carpet & upholstery in Archway N19, remember?). I am ready with a short answer for you: It’s been great!

I am still at the very early stages of my becoming a full-blown carpet cleaner, however, I have started and doing a little progress. As wise people say “Done is better than perfect”, I decided I will jump from the cliff and learn to fly on my way down.

Before I delve into the details and nitty-gritty of How to Become a Professional Carpet and Rug Cleaner in Archway (in the year 2021), I will give you a bit of heads up about carpets. I was surprised to find out many people across the globe do not know this soft furnishing material as we know it in the UK, however, they know it as rugs or some kind of wall coverings. So here goes.

With a carpet, you have extra work in the form of vacuuming as well as sweeping all your hard floor surfaces. Carpets need a bit more in the way of deep cleaning because of their tendency to collect odours and stains. Nevertheless, we persist with them in our homes in most cases. Why do we do it? What are the advantages of having a carpet that make them worth all the bother of installing and cleaning them?

The reasons for having a carpet down on your floors, whether it’s in the office or at home, are many and go beyond just fashion and showing that you can afford it. These reasons explain why even if you are one of those people who’s better off without a carpet on the floor for asthma reasons, you’ll probably have a mat or rug down instead, as mats and rugs do the same sort of job.

The story of why we put carpets on our floors instead of (or as well as) on our walls is a story of the senses and of comfort in our surroundings. Grab a nice hot cuppa and let’s explore them together!

Carpets For Softness

Wooden floors, concrete floors and tiled floors are all known as a hard floor for a reason. While being hard can have its advantages in the right places (get your mind out of the gutter!), it’s not always what you want for a floor in your home or in your office. At home, there are times when you want to sit on the floor to play with children or with the dog. You may want to lie down on the floor and do a few exercises during the day, especially if you work from home. Try doing this on a floor without a carpet and you’ll soon know all about it. Your hips and knees won’t thank you. However, with a carpet down, the floor is a lot nicer to sit, play, exercise and lie down on.

Even if you never sit or lie on the floor, the softness underfoot can still be a real advantage. If you have to spend a lot of time on your feet – as a teacher, perhaps – then it can be hard on your hips, feet and back if you have to do this on a hard floor. Those of you who have to do this probably already know all about this. However, with a carpet down, it’s a bit easier on the body!

If you’ve got small children, you know that learning to walk is a tricky business and involves a lot of falling over. The process is a lot less painful and involves fewer tears if there’s a carpet down.

What’s more, we all drop things from time to time. If you drop, say, a wineglass or a coffee cup, onto a hard floor, it’s quite likely to break, meaning that you don’t just have to deal with the spilled drink; you have to deal with the nasty sharp pieces of broken glass or porcelain. If you drop it onto a carpet, then all you’ll have to deal with is the stain. Yes, removing wine or coffee stains out of a carpet can be job for a professional carpet cleaner but it’s much less hassle than the risk of getting splinters in your feet on top of losing your favourite mug.

Carpets For Quiet

Hard floors might break dropped wineglasses but other things just bounce off them very easily, especially sound waves. Rooms with hard floors tend to echo more because of this. This means that any noises in the room reverberate a little, especially if the walls are hard and bare as well – and window glass falls into the category of “hard and bare”. In the case of wood, you can also have the issue of sound waves travelling through the wood from one room to another or into the walls.

Carpet, however, deadens, scatters and absorbs some of the sound waves, so they don’t bounce anywhere else – like into your unwilling ears. Putting carpet down makes a room a lot quieter, which is better for your sanity by reducing the audible clutter. You may not get the reverb effects possible in the bathroom, which is why we sing in the shower or bathtub, but that reduction in echo makes the sounds in your home or office easier to listen to and less jumbled.

Having carpet down also means that you can walk more quietly, which is another reason why they help stop a room becoming too noisy. This is great for privacy. It’s really embarrassing if you need to use the loo in the middle of the night and you have to march down an uncarpeted hallway and through a lot of uncarpeted rooms, your slippers slapping on the floors with every step. You can swear that everybody is going to hear you and know exactly where you’re going. With carpet, however, your footfalls are light and you can tiptoe softly all the way without waking anybody up – unless you kick the sofa, but that’s another story and not the fault of the carpet.

Carpets For Warmth

Unless you’re an absolute newbie to the world of interior decorating and housing design, you’ll know about the importance of insulation. Whether you are in a hot place wanting to keep the heat out and the cool in, like our friends in California, or whether you live in a chillier clime and want to trap the warmth in like we do here in the UK, insulation is a must. We can insulate our walls and roofs, and double-glaze our windows, but it’s possible to lose heat through the floor as well if it’s not insulated. This is particularly a problem in older wooden cottages with floorboards but doesn’t pose much of an issue for modern apartment buildings.

Even the thinnest carpet will insulate the floor, preventing heat being lost through the floors and (in the case of those wooden floors) draughts coming up. Add in a properly installed wall to wall carpet with underlay and the amount of extra warmth in that room has to be experienced to be believed.

Carpets For Safety

We’ve all seen those signs up in the supermarket or a public loo when someone’s cleaned the floor and left it a bit damp: Slippery When Wet. You never see these signs on a carpeted floor simply because if they get wet or if you have shoes that have got damp and/or don’t have much tread, they won’t get slippery. This means that they pose less of a hazard. Even in buildings where most of the floors are hard floors, there will be mats or rugs down by the floor to receive those wet shoes and cut down on the risk of slips and falls. Yes, they’ll need to be cleaned more often because of this, but that’s what carpet cleaning services are for.

Although the safety aspects are more of an issue in office buildings and other public settings, they’re still important around the home. We’ve all heard the warnings about how most accidents happen at home rather than in the workplace, and some of those accidents involve slipping on hard floors. Although one can’t do away with hard floors altogether in the home and some rooms can’t have carpet down (bathrooms, for example), if someone is at high risk of falls (e.g. older people), then having carpet in as many places as possible will help reduce that risk.

Softness, quiet, warmth and safety: I don’t know about you, but those are attributes that I’d like my home to have and my office as well. They’re all made possible by carpets, mats and rugs, so it’s no wonder that we like them so much.

I’ve Had Enough – I am Taking Up Carpet Cleaning in Archway

Now, here is the thing – I am so meticulous and demanding from any aspect of my life, that I cannot help but feel disgusted with the stains on my living room rug.

It’s a lovely Afghan rug that has been a trusty companion for many years. It has followed me to every place in London I have dared call my home. Archway included.

I moved to N19 just before the COVID pandemic hit these shores (and the whole planet). I have always had a thing for North London. South of the Thames is just not my cup of tea. I have lived there for a good few years but what made me move away from any London postcodes starting with SE or SW was the lack of good roads. The South Circular road is a joke and there are literally no fast roads to use when a quick movement is required.

North London is a stark contrast with its fast North Circular Road (A406), you have the A1, the M1, A41, M11, A12, A40/M40 – all of these just make a car driving guy’s life a lot easier.

Coming back to Archway. I love the shady streets lined with big old trees (St John’s Villas, Holloway Road, Prospero Road etc.). Calm and tranquil, my walks have never been better.

Coming back to rugs and carpets. I was looking at my trusty beautiful Afghan rug and I felt sorry for the state it was in. Being busy with my life in general has left it neglected and unclean.

I will be a carpet cleaner in Archway, yay!

Right at this moment – Bang! A lightning bright idea flashed in my lazy afternoon brain. I will become a carpet cleaner. A carpet and rug cleaner, to be precise. Suddenly, I decided to start studying the rug construction, its fibres, the science that goes behind the ancient methods of weaving and threading – the whole lot. I will learn how to cleaning carpets and rugs like an expert. And the best bit – I will start earning a living with my new skills.

I was so pumped, I instantly added a couple of coffee stains to my poor rug. Actually, dropping my cup of espresso did not register that clearly in my mind as I was deep into thinking about my exciting future as a professional carpet cleaner in Archway.

OK, get moving. I need to start working on my idea. For starters I need to create a master plan of what milestones I need to achieve in order to get to the place I want to be. I need a list of tasks to do.

Jeez, it’s so late at night and even the constantly noisy traffic on the Holloway Road has died out. I need to reset and recharge my brain. Tomorrow I will start ticking those boxes.

Exciting!