How to clean a very dirty carpet

We will not write bor­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, but we will offer you to go through a quest with cer­tain tasks for clean­ing the car­pet. The first step is to look at our instance and deter­mine its type.

Choosing tools

In order to start devel­op­ing activ­i­ties to restore the clean­li­ness of soft floor­ing, we need to decide how and with what help we will do this.

We will need the fol­low­ing tools:

1. Clothes brush with hard bris­tles.

2. Device with a rub­ber noz­zle for clean­ing wool and hair.

3. Sponge.

4. Vac­u­um clean­er.

In addi­tion to mechan­i­cal means, you will need chem­i­cals:

1. wash­ing pow­der;

2. soda;

3. vine­gar;

4. dish­wash­ing liq­uid;

5. stain remover;

Let’s take for exam­ple an aver­age dirty vir­tu­al car­pet and apply to it all types of pol­lu­tion pos­si­ble for an apart­ment. It could be:

1. Ani­mal hair and human hair.

2. Street dust (and not only) from shoes.

3. Tram­pled left­over food.

4. Dried stains of sauce, tea, cof­fee and oth­er edi­bles.

5. The results of chil­dren’s games: paints, felt-tip pens, plas­ticine, slime, chew­ing gum, glue.

In gen­er­al, it turns out quite a “rain­bow” pic­ture. Don’t let things get to that state. But, accord­ing to the laws of bio­physics, any liv­ing sys­tem tends towards chaos. There­fore, we will cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion.

Let’s go from sim­ple to com­plex. From the pro­posed solu­tions, you have to choose the lev­el that match­es your car­pet.

Level 1 — mechanical cleaning

This part of our quest will be about find­ing the best solu­tion for col­lect­ing hair, fur, crumbs, and any­thing that can be brushed off, torn off, or scraped off.

Collection of wool and hair

At first glance, this is the eas­i­est job. But it is not so easy to clean short hairs from the pile of the car­pet. Let’s use the pos­si­ble meth­ods.

Brush

The most ratio­nal way. The bris­tles pick up not only the out­er lay­er of wool, but also those hairs that are deep between the pile. A lit­tle more dif­fi­cult with a looped rug. But this method works for him too.

If you have a choice, opt for a long-han­dled floor sweep­er. This way you can get the job done much faster.

Animal brushing glove

Just as great as this thing is at groom­ing dogs, it’s also great at clean­ing car­pet. You can use an ordi­nary rub­ber glove, as well as a bare hand. If the glove is slight­ly moist­ened, the wool will eas­i­ly roll on the sur­face of the car­pet.

Sponge mop

This house­hold appli­ance ide­al­ly rolls hair and ani­mal hair into large balls. The large sur­face area of ​​the wet sponge head and the com­fort of a long-han­dled squeegee make the job very easy.

As a last resort, take a sim­ple sponge or damp cloth. Forces of course spend more, but the effect will be the same.

Rubber window cleaning brush

It can also be on a long han­dle, which will great­ly facil­i­tate the work. Or you can use a tool to remove water from auto glass. The rub­ber strip well col­lects hair, threads, wool. Before clean­ing, light­ly damp­en the car­pet with water from a spray bot­tle.

Scotch tape, sticky roller

It is com­plete­ly irra­tional for severe pol­lu­tion. You can use it, but it will take a lot of time and con­sum­ables. Based on this, we do not rec­om­mend this method, although it has the right to exist.

At the end of the mechan­i­cal clean­ing phase, it would be great to walk over the sur­face of the car­pet with a vac­u­um clean­er with a brush attach­ment. In this way, we will remove the remain­ing long debris and col­lect dust.

Removal of adhering substances

For strip­ping, we will look for spots of plas­ticine, chew­ing gum, slimes. It will be nec­es­sary, if pos­si­ble, to remove them mechan­i­cal­ly from the car­pet sur­face as much as pos­si­ble.

Plasticine

Remove what is pos­si­ble first. Use fin­gers, plas­tic stack, table knife. Scrape and pull out the stuck mass. Then, the residues can be washed with the fol­low­ing means:

1. Sponge and dish­wash­ing liq­uid.

2. Means “Anti­sil­i­con”.

3. Alco­hol.

4. Van­ish Gold for car­pets.

slime

This gooey favorite for kids to play with leaves marks all over the place, includ­ing on the car­pet. A rel­a­tive­ly fresh mass must be scraped off the car­pet with a table knife. The stain should be col­lect­ed towards the cen­ter, and not smeared in dif­fer­ent direc­tions.

Apply a thick lay­er of tooth­paste to the dirt. The slime, under the influ­ence of the paste, will get wet and lose its sticky prop­er­ties. After that, you need to col­lect the rest of the mass with a table­spoon.

Next, light­ly damp­en the car­pet in the area to be cleaned, and lath­er it well with laun­dry soap. After a minute, rub the dirt thor­ough­ly with a clothes brush. Rinse the cleaned area with water.

Gum

This pol­lu­tion is more dif­fi­cult than plas­ticine. But he also has con­trol.

The first method with white spir­it is suit­able for nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic coat­ings. But it is impor­tant to know that after pro­cess­ing, an oil trace will remain in place of the chew­ing gum. There­fore, it is imme­di­ate­ly nec­es­sary to apply dish­wash­ing liq­uid to the stain and rub it thor­ough­ly with a sponge.

The sec­ond way is to use the cool­ing prop­er­ties of liq­ue­fied gas for lighters. Chew­ing gum should be sprin­kled from a can and, while it is frozen, quick­ly scrape off the car­pet with a table knife or spoon han­dle.

Assessment of the passed level

If, upon reach­ing the passed stages, you are already sat­is­fied with the result, then your car­pet was not com­plete­ly launched.

At the end, you can do one of the sim­ple manip­u­la­tions to refresh the exte­ri­or of the floor cov­er­ing, which are giv­en in lev­el 2, in the “gen­er­al clean­ing” sub­sec­tion.

And with us in the game are those who have trod­den paths vis­i­ble on the palace.

Level 2 — Dry cleaning

Don’t be scared. We will dry-clean with house­hold harm­less means. First of all, we will car­ry out tar­get­ed elim­i­na­tion of point pol­lu­tion.

Stain removal

Each spot requires an indi­vid­ual approach. But most of the known con­t­a­m­i­nants are washed off the car­pet with uni­ver­sal prod­ucts that we have at hand.

Toothpaste

Removes traces of cos­met­ics, tea, cof­fee, fat, sauce.

To remove stains, lubri­cate the stained area with paste, leave for 15 min­utes and then wash every­thing off with soapy foam. Make soap foam from a glass of water and a few drops of dish­wash­ing deter­gent. Lath­er the solu­tion with a sponge.

Ammonia

In addi­tion to the fact that ammo­nia removes the bulk of fresh and old stains, it also gen­er­al­ly refresh­es the appear­ance of the car­pet.

Let’s pre­pare the solu­tion and clean it:

1. For 5 l. water, take 1 tbsp. dish­wash­ing liq­uid and 3 tbsp. ammo­nia. Mix well.

2. To remove stains, apply the prod­uct on dirt and leave for 15 min­utes.

3. Rinse the sur­face with a cloth and clean water.

4. With the rest of the solu­tion, go over the entire car­pet sur­face. Use a clothes brush.

5. Rinse the car­pet with a rag and water.

6. Let the car­pet dry well. Ide­al­ly, if you can dry it in the fresh air.

Vinegar

A per­ma­nent home helper, which, along with cit­ric acid, saves dif­fer­ent sur­faces from pol­lu­tion of var­i­ous eti­olo­gies.

To pre­pare the com­po­si­tion, we need 2 tbsp. l. vine­gar (or cit­ric acid) per 500 ml of water. Apply the solu­tion point­wise and then rinse with soapy water.

Laundry soap

This ver­sa­tile sol­dier is always at hand. Do this:

1. Wet the dirty sur­face. You can use a sponge, or you can use a spray bot­tle.

2. Rub the stain with soap and wait.

3. After a few min­utes, wipe off excess soap solu­tion from the car­pet and rinse the sur­face with clean water.

For the most inac­ces­si­ble pol­lu­tion, you can use store-bought prod­ucts. Van­ish, Cin­derel­la, Car­pet clean­er, Sele­na Car­pet work well. But first, read the instruc­tions and try the chem­i­cal on an incon­spic­u­ous place.

General carpet cleaning

We are already very close to vic­to­ry. The deci­sive bat­tle is com­ing. And then we can proud­ly raise the flag of vic­to­ry in the fight against dirt. We need to clean the entire sur­face of the car­pet, there­by refresh­ing the appear­ance and bring­ing back the bright­ness of the col­ors.

From the pro­posed recipes, choose the one that suits your type of car­pet. Syn­thet­ics can be washed with water, while nat­ur­al pile prefers dry clean­ing.

Dry method with starch or soda

Here we will use the absorbent prop­er­ties of pow­der sub­stances. For clean­ing, take either dry starch or soda.

You need to do this:

1. Spread the pow­der even­ly on a dry sur­face and spread it over the entire area of ​​​​the car­pet.

2. Leave the car­pet like this for 1 hour.

3. Then take your clothes brush and start lift­ing the lint in a cir­cu­lar motion and brush­ing out the dust and dirt.

4. After treat­ment, sweep the clean­ing pow­der from the car­pet.

5. Vac­u­um the rug at max­i­mum speed from the front and back sides.

Returning brightness with citric acid

This solu­tion is suit­able for a clean but fad­ed spec­i­men. Dilute 2 tbsp. l. cit­ric acid in 200 ml of hot water and then add anoth­er 400 ml of cold water. To clean, apply the solu­tion with a sponge to the entire sur­face of the car­pet and let it dry.

Baking soda, vinegar and laundry detergent

In addi­tion to clean­ing the gen­er­al back­ground, the pro­posed com­po­si­tions remove many per­sis­tent stains.

We will need:

1. soda — 1 tbsp. l.;

2. vine­gar — a third of a glass;

3. pow­der — 1 tbsp. l.;

4. water — 3 tbsp.;

Mix all the ingre­di­ents and pour the solu­tion into a spray bot­tle. You need to apply it like this:

1. Spray the work­ing com­po­si­tion on the car­pet and leave to act for 30 min­utes.

2. Scrub the car­pet vig­or­ous­ly with the brush.

3. Remove the dirt-absorbed clean­ing solu­tion with a damp cloth.

In the same way, you can clean the car­pet if you pre­pare a solu­tion of 1 liter of hot water, 1 tbsp. l wash­ing pow­der and 1 tbsp. l. ammo­nia solu­tion.

Two-step dry cleaning with baking soda and vinegar

Car­pet can be upgrad­ed to “fac­to­ry set­tings” by wet clean­ing with the fol­low­ing recipe.

We will need:

1. 0.5 l of warm water;

2. 1 st. l. bak­ing soda;

3. 4 tbsp. l. table vine­gar;

4. 2 tbsp. l. dish­wash­ing liq­uid (or 1 tbsp. wash­ing pow­der).

We remem­ber that our car­pet has already been cleaned of all pos­si­ble dirt and stains. But if you skipped the first step, then do not for­get to care­ful­ly exhaust and vac­u­um the car­pet.

Next, we make the first solu­tion: mix 300 ml of warm water, 1 tbsp. soda, 2 tbsp. liq­uid for dish­es and make a thick foam with a sponge. To get foam, active­ly squeeze the sponge with your hand, dip­ping it into the soapy liq­uid.

Let’s start pro­cess­ing:

1. Apply foam to dry car­pet with a sponge.

2. With a brush, in a cir­cu­lar motion, fluff and lift the pile.

3. Apply a sec­ond lay­er of foam and leave it to soft­en the dirt for 30 min­utes.

Pre­pare the sec­ond solu­tion: mix 200 ml of water and 4 tbsp. vine­gar.

Let’s do the pro­cess­ing:

1. Sponge vine­gar liq­uid onto car­pet soaked in bak­ing soda. Thanks to the foamy reac­tion of soda and vine­gar, the debris will be pushed up. Soap suds will pre­vent dirt from sink­ing back to the base of the lint.

2. Scrub the entire sur­face vig­or­ous­ly with a stiff brush and leave the car­pet for 5 min­utes.

3. After the required time, rinse the entire sur­face well with water and a rag.

4. After dry­ing, vac­u­um the coat­ing at max­i­mum speed.

An effective method based on laundry soap and salt

Despite the sim­plic­i­ty of the com­po­nents used, the solu­tion is very active. It com­plete­ly elim­i­nates gray plaque and dirt stains.

We need to take:

1. dry salt — 500 g;

2. laun­dry soap — ⅓ piece;

3. warm water.

Grate the soap, dis­solve it in 200 ml of water and pour the liq­uid into the spray bot­tle. If the prod­uct is thick, dilute it with water.

Let’s get down to busi­ness:

1. Treat the sur­face with the result­ing liq­uid soap.

2. Sprin­kle salt even­ly over the top.

3. Scrub the pile inten­sive­ly with a brush and leave for 3 hours.

4. After dry­ing, clean the car­pet with a vac­u­um clean­er.

Option for lovers of household chemicals

In order to save time, you can use spe­cial­ized chem­istry. Man­u­fac­tur­ers offer us var­i­ous foams and sprays for car­pet clean­ing. These funds are sold in any hard­ware store.

Usu­al­ly, the instruc­tion boils down to the fact that the active foam is dis­trib­uted over the entire pile with­out rub­bing. Next, the car­pet is dried and vac­u­umed.

Alternative cleaning methods

For those who can­not stand any chem­i­cals, there are alter­na­tive ways:

1. Clean­ing car­pets with high pres­sure water equip­ment. This can be done at a self-ser­vice car wash or a com­pact house­hold appli­ance such as Karcher.

2. Using a wash­ing vac­u­um clean­er. Even with­out the use of spe­cial sham­poos, the car­pet becomes many times brighter.

3. steam gen­er­a­tor treat­ment. The own­ers of these devices prac­ti­cal­ly do not use chem­i­cals in the fight for clean­li­ness. Hot steam push­es out even the most per­sis­tent types of dirt from the depths of the pile.

Summarizing

Con­grat­u­la­tions if you have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed all the steps. Now you get the title of a pro­fes­sion­al and can safe­ly teach begin­ners.

Eval­u­at­ing the results objec­tive­ly, let’s say that the whole dif­fi­cul­ty in car­ing for car­pets lies in the fact that we often have to clean with­in our apart­ment, which is not very con­ve­nient. There­fore, the more dif­fi­cult the pol­lu­tion, the more time will have to be spent to restore the orig­i­nal appear­ance of the car­pet.