Many people think that hiring a professional cleaner or even doing their own shampooing is the most important thing they can do to keep their carpet looking like new. Let’s dig deeper to find out.
Let me start by stating that this post will only be of interest and benefit if you’re serious about getting the most life out of your carpet, for example, if you’re a home-owner or commercial owner/manager intent on having it last for many, many years. If you’re a renter, this won’t mean much until you own your own place with carpet someday.
This post will also be most beneficial if your carpet is relatively new. The advice I’m going to give won’t be of any help if you’ve neglected your carpet for several years and it’s now to the point where it’s not looking that great.
So if you’re that new or almost-new carpet owner, this post could save you many thousands of dollars over the long run! So let’s get on with it.
The high cost of carpet neglect
I find it interesting how one of the biggest household expenses is also one of the most neglected. I’m talking about carpet.
For example, to get only about 800 sq. ft. of our basement carpeted when our home was built in 2012 cost several thousand dollars. (I can’t imagine how much more it would cost now, over a dozen years later!) Yet in my ignorance of not being trained in carpet cleaning at the time – and not until several years later – I didn’t realize the extreme importance of keeping it clean on a regular basis.
Let’s use painting as an analogy. If you’re not able to do your own painting, one might argue that getting an entire basement painted would also cost a lot. But the main difference between carpet and paint is that you don’t have to regularly clean walls. You might wipe away the odd smudge here and there, perhaps patch a gouge or a hole. But every decade or so, you can simply do all the patching at once and then add a new layer of paint.
Not so with carpeting – or any other type of flooring, for that matter. However, it’s surprising how many people suddenly one day realize that, because of basic neglect, their carpet has reached the point where even a professional cleaning isn’t making much of a difference. That dingy look in the hallways and other high-traffic areas isn’t going away. The flattened areas stay flat no matter what.
And so they reach the point where they have go to considerable expense and hassle – far more than a new paint job (paint doesn’t cost much, carpet costs much MORE!) – to tear out and replace that carpet.
But what could they have done to avoid this? How could they have protected their investment not just for several more years, but even decades?
It’s surprising how many people suddenly one day realize that, because of basic neglect, their carpet has reached the point where even a professional cleaning isn’t making much of a difference.
The most important step
Most people vacuum every so often and then, when it looks dirty enough, they might possibly phone a professional to clean their carpets. But, trying to save a buck, they might instead rent a Rug Doctor or even buy a shampoo machine from a department store, neither of which does a true deep-cleaning.
So let’s finally address the question about the most important step in cleaning carpet. When asked, most people might say hiring a professional or doing their own shampooing. However, the actual answer might be surprising to most people – drumroll, please – it is actually vacuuming at least once per week!!
The two biggest benefits
Yes, dragging out that ol’ vacuum regularly will, first of all, lift the pile of your carpet so that it doesn’t remain permanently crushed. This is a crucial habit to develop right after you get a new carpet because once it has been crushed over time, even a professional cleaning will not lift it again.
As an example, perhaps the biggest fault of my ignorance with our brand-new carpet was not realizing that I should have been vacuuming at least once per week, no matter what. But it didn’t “look” dirty and so I vacuumed maybe only once per month at best until I became a trained Carpet Cleaning Technician (CCT) several years later.
So once finally trained and testing my new knowledge and equipment on our carpet, I was dismayed about how I wasn’t able to lift the pile to what it was originally. If I had vacuumed weekly, no matter what (and more often in high-traffic areas), most of that pile would still be upright to this day.
A non-worn sample of the loop-pile carpet in my house. This is what it could have looked like if I had vacuumed weekly and also done annual professional deep-cleanings. Click photo to enlarge.
Second, regular vacuuming at least once per week will remove any new dry, insoluble soil particles introduced since the last vacuuming before they have a chance to settle down to the carpet base. If left for too long, foot traffic will rub these particles against the carpet fibers, etching very fine scratches into the individual filaments. This “abrasion” causes a carpet to appear darker, dull, dingy, or soiled even after a professional cleaning. This dull, darker appearance is often called “traffic lane gray” because the carpet fibers no longer reflect light as they were designed to. (Kerner and James, 2019, p. 20.) Again, even a professional cleaning cannot restore or ‘fix’ what has already been ‘broken.’
The loop-pile carpet in my house after over a decade of not regularly vacuuming. The pile is crushed and the brownish tinge is evidence of abrasion. This will never look as good as new again, no matter how much future cleaning is done. Click photo to enlarge.
In other words, vacuuming is like maintaining a car. The best form of “preventative maintenance” for a car is regularly changing the oil, not waiting until the engine seizes up because the oil breaks down or dries up and the engine is destroyed. For carpets, regular vacuuming is the best form of preventative maintenance needed in order for it to not become damaged beyond repair.
How often should you vacuum?
I know that I’ve mentioned the idea of vacuuming once per week, but is this true in all cases?
First, that depends upon whether this carpet is in your house (residential) or in a commercial setting. However, since commercial carpet cleaning needs vary widely depending upon numerous factors that will not be discussed here (amount of foot traffic, soil type(s), air contaminants), I will focus this section on residential carpets. The owner or manager of a commercial property should consult the latest IICRC S100 Standard for the frequency of commercial carpet cleaning.
Second, residential vacuuming once per week is only the MINIMUM recommendation as per the same S100 standard. This applies to a “light” traffic soil rating, for example a single person or empty-nester couple with no pets and who don’t smoke.
Add more people, pets, and smoking and you increase how often you should vacuum:
Let’s be realistic. How many people in these situations vacuum even once per week on average? Especially in a situation where there’s all the extra busy-ness of a busy home? I would argue that most people were like me, lucky to think about vacuuming even once per month before I became properly educated!
Residential vacuuming once per week is only the MINIMUM recommendation.
Will just any ‘ol vacuum work? Time for another surprise!
So the first surprise I presented is how regular vacuuming – at least once per week – is the most important step in cleaning carpet. Well, a surprise for most people.
The next surprise will involve effectiveness of the vacuum cleaner you currently use. It would be an injustice for me to not discuss this or else, if you got serious about going through all the effort of regular vacuuming, you might have little to nothing to show for it by not using a proper vacuum cleaner.
Let me get straight to the point: stick vacuums do NOT properly clean carpet. I don’t care if it’s a top-of-the-line Dyson or Shark that’s nearing the $1,000 mark. I know they’re all the rage right now – people no longer seem to want to push around a bigger vacuum – but they only designed to properly clean hard surfaces and frankly most of them don’t even do a reasonable job of that. (I should know – I own a stick vac for that purpose.) Even the best-of-the-best is no more effective at cleaning carpet than a toothbrush is at removing paint.
An upright vacuum cleaner moving across a residential loop-pile carpet.
Second, the vacuum you already own – whether stick, canister, or upright – is probably not cleaning your carpet much beyond the top surface. And what was your main reason for choosing it? Probably because it was cheap.
In most homes today, you will find popular vacuum cleaner brands like Bissell, Shark, and Eureka mainly because they’re more affordable. But do they effectively clean your multi-thousand-dollar carpet? And how can you find one that does?
Stick vacuums do NOT properly clean carpet.
A lot of people resort to online reviews, but those are all subjective. You need to find the results of objective testing. This is where an organization like The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) comes in. They test all sorts of vacuum cleaners and then give Bronze, Silver, and Gold ratings to both residential and commercial ones. This CRI Seal of Approval program helps you to find the vacuum that 1) cleans the most effectively 2) without damaging your carpet 3) while also minimizing the amount of dust particles released into the air. In other words, it finds “the best of the best” so that you don’t have to!
Now here’s the shocker. You won’t find any CRI SOA vacuums made by the popular brand names listed above. You also won’t find any made by Dyson or Hoover. In fact, out of the hundreds of residential vacuum makes and models out there, there are currently only ten – yes, count them, TEN!!! – SOA approved residential vacuums on the CRI website (under Certification, choose Residential) and I’m quite certain that you won’t recognize any of the brand names!
The high cost of being a tightwad
Let’s face it. Isn’t your multi-thousand-dollar investment worth cleaning with a quality, certified vacuum cleaner?
However, if you want quality, you’ll have to pay for it. You could cheap-out just to save money, but then you aren’t properly maintaining your investment. You will have to phone a professional carpet cleaner more often because the soil particles that your cheap vacuum can’t remove will build up faster and thereby cause a dingy appearance and damage the fibers sooner.
In other words, by cheaping-out now, you’ll be spending more in the long run by needing to spend more on professional cleaning plus having to replace your carpet a lot sooner.
You can reduce the chances of all this by simply vacuuming as little as only once per week with a certified cleaner. Why not spend a little extra time and money now to save a lot of money later on?
Reference
Kerner, M. and James, J. (2019). Carpet Cleaning. Legend Brands. [Only available to students enrolled in Carpet Cleaning Technician training (CCT).]
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