Seven Tips For Keeping Carpets Clean (And A Bonus Tip For Rugs)

Everything in life gets dirty. That’s just the way things are. Naturally, it’s as true for carpets as it is for anything else. However, there are things that anybody can do to help the carpets stay looking nice rather than descending into manky, damp, smelly dog hair ick. As a professional carpet cleaner in Cricklewood, I know that these things work a treat!

OK, these carpet cleaning hacks aren’t going to be able to transform that terrible 1970s carpet that the landlord never gets around to replacing into something a bit easier on the eye! However, they will make sure that your carpets stay fresh, fluffy and nice to sit on.

Oh yes – and there are a couple of bonus tips that apply to mats and rugs as well! Get those fibres clean is what I say, my word!

Tip #1: Take Your Shoes Off

Shoes are designed to protect your feet when you walk to and from the Crown pub (the Clayton Crown Hotel, to be precise), down Edgeware Road or anywhere in between, or when you’re mowing the lawn. This means that they are likely to pick up mud, dirt, grime, water, residues of dog pee, bits of grass and… well, you get the picture. These are items best kept off your carpet. Sure, you can wipe your feet on the doormat before coming inside, but doormats aren’t magic, and there will still be bits left on the bottom of your shoes. The answer, of course, is to take your shoes off at the door. This is the norm in quite a lot of cultures, and it’s becoming more acceptable to do so throughout the UK – even when you’re visiting someone else. Those living in rural areas may already know the drill of asking, “What do you want me to do with my shoes?” when turning up at someone’s place. If you really can’t bring yourself to not wear shoes inside, then at least get into the habit of having separate outdoor and indoor shoes and changing them when you get to the door. This is no different from the practice of putting on running shoes to walk around the block during lunch at work and then swapping them for your office shoes when you get back.

Besides, walking barefoot on clean carpet is a sensual pleasure that shouldn’t be missed!

Tip #2: Keep The Mess Out

Some things that we do in our homes are more likely to spill and splatter and get mess onto our carpets than others. If you know that an activity you want or need to do is likely to spill bits or put something you don’t really want into the carpets, then don’t do it on the carpet. For example, don’t brush the dog (even if your Gladstone Park was not a muddy one), apply a sloppy face mask or dye your hair on a carpeted area. Take it into the bathroom where there’s no carpet or outside (even onto the balcony). Removing those stains can be difficult. Why pay for emergency carpet cleaning services when you can wait until your maintenance clean is due? It’s a no brainer, this one.

Ideally, you shouldn’t eat or drink in carpeted areas either. If you can, put the dining table in a hard floor area, such as the kitchen, and don’t eat anywhere else. However, we all know that this is probably unreasonable, as we all like to have a coffee or glass of wine and maybe some cheese and crackers during a Netflix session. In some houses, the only area for the dining table is a carpeted area. Food and drink drop crumbs and get spilt – and some spills are worse than others. This leads me to the next tip…

Tip #3: Use Plates And Coffee Tables

If you’re going to take snacks and drinks into the living room or the bedroom – which we all do – then at the very least, make sure that whatever you’re eating is on a plate that will catch the crumbs (unless you are visiting the Cricklewood Baptist Church, haha). With drinks, instead of putting your cup or glass down on the carpet where it’s likely to be knocked or kicked, put it on a coffee table or some other handy surface nearby. It’s also smart to ensure that anything you want to eat in a carpeted area is not sloppy or runny and likely to be spilt. Mind you, I’m partial to a nice cup of soup in front of the fire and/or a good DVD, so I can recommend trays as another line of defence against spills and drips.

Tip #4: Put Down A Protective Layer

Even when they’re eating at the table, small children are messy eaters – and some adults can be a bit sloppy as well! If you possibly can (see Tip #2), put the table in a hard-floor area. If you can’t, then it’s a good idea to put down a protective plastic mat under the table where small children eat, especially if they’re at the high chair stage of development. You can buy plastic sheets expressly designed for this purpose, or you can improvise with a sheet. Cheaper and easier than trying to clean the messed up carpet afterwards.

The principle of putting down a protective layer also applies to other items that are likely to spill and/or would be disastrous if they did spill. That’s why I insist that when my daughter paints her toenails, she puts her feet (and the polish) on an old copy of the local newspaper or an old towel where spills of nail polish won’t matter like they would on the carpet.

Tip #5: Vacuum Regularly

This one is a biggie. No matter what you do, some mess is going to get on the carpets. We all shed skin and hair particles everywhere we go. Then there’s that moment when you nipped out to take in the rubbish bins in your slippers because it wasn’t far and the pavement was clean… This means that you’ll have to get out the trusty old vacuum cleaner and give your carpets some TLC. How often you want to vacuum will depend on you, who’s in your house, and what you do, but weekly should be your bare minimum.

Tip #6: Deal With Spills And Stains Immediately

If a spill or a stain sits on a carpet for long enough to dry, it will be harder to remove. Trust me on this – there have been times when I’ve been called out to a stain removal job where the stain in question has been sitting on the carpet for months. I’m shuddering – these stains are hard to get out. However, if they’re dealt with straight away, even stains that look downright brutal, such as curry stains and red wine, will come out. You’ll need to scrape or sponge up as much as you can straight away, then do your best to keep the area from drying out before the emergency stain removal team comes (most good professional carpet cleaning companies provide same-day and emergency stain treatment services). If you tackle the stain yourself, then use cold water and avoid spreading the stain further out into the rest of the carpet.

Tip #7: Restrict Pets From Certain Areas

We love our pets, but we know that they shed hair and just don’t get the idea of wiping feet at the door after frolicking over a wet lawn. If you have pets, you will have a bit more dirt on the fibres to deal with, and deep carpet cleaning every year is an absolute must. However, you can make life a bit easier by keeping pets out of certain areas (bedrooms, for example). This restricts the mess to only certain areas of the house. It’s easier to train dogs to do this; cats, however, will go wherever they fancy, but at least they’re less likely to get muddy than dogs.

Bonus Tip For Rugs And Mats

To make sure that mats and rugs don’t develop track marks on part of them and/or weird faded patches from where they’ve sat in the sun, rotate them every couple of months so that they wear out and fade evenly. If your mat or rug is an odd shape rather than round or square, enabling you to rotate it easily, then shifting it around a bit or reorienting it will do the trick.

Dealing With Flooded Carpets – Cleaning and Restoration Insights

There’s no denying that it’s been a pretty rotten summer in the UK in 2021, with rain leading to serious floods – several times. The flash floods saw multiple parts of London getting a right dousing, with road closures and even Tube closures, especially right near the Thames.

Even if your home or business escaped the effects of this past summer’s floods, your carpets aren’t immune to becoming flooded. If there’s a leak in the roof, all that heavy rain can soak your carpets. Rain can also come in through open windows or by accident on people’s wet weather clothes or even shoes, and end up on the carpets. Even if the weather’s fine, carpets can still get a bit soggy if someone forgets that the tap’s running into the sink or if the kids get a bit overenthusiastic in the bath – or if someone spills or splashes water inside (I remember reading about one woman who discovered her daughters having a water balloon fight in the living room…).

Why Carpets Don’t Like Water

There is a reason why carpets and water – or any other sort of liquid – don’t play nicely together. The main reason is mould. Mould likes to grow in the same sort of conditions that you do – somewhere where the temperature is just right, and where there’s plenty of food and drink. Your home or office is already the right temperature for life, and carpets already contain at least a little bit of dirt, dust and debris, which are the perfect food for mould. Add in liquid, and you have the perfect conditions for growing mould.

Usually, carpets are too dry for mould to grow easily. However, when water lingers in them, this allows the mould spores to proliferate. Because the last ingredient needed for a real mould problem is time, the faster you can act to remove water from carpets, the better the odds of you defeating the mould are. However, the catch is that some of the natural fibres used to make carpets are very absorbent. If your carpet has a natural jute backing – which a lot of them do – things can get particularly problematic, as jute is very, very absorbent and hangs onto the water as few other natural fibres do.

In short, if you get water or other liquid on your carpets, you have to act quickly to ensure that all the water gets out.

The other problem that can occur if a lot of water gets on your carpets is that the liquid can float all the deep-down dirt to the top of the carpet, making it look hideous. The principle of using moisture to loosen trapped dirt from the carpets is how professional carpet shampooing and steam cleaning work, but if the water got on the carpets by accident, nothing’s taking that loosened dirt away.

Lastly, if it wasn’t water that got onto the carpets but some other liquid, there can be problems with staining (in the case of liquids like red wine or colourful soft drinks) and with bad odours (in the case of milk or urine). These problems can occur even if the spill wasn’t exactly a flood but was only a little bit.

First Aid For Flooded Carpets

If you’ve come across a flood on your carpets, what do you need to do? While it’s true that you probably won’t be able to get all of the water out of your flooded carpet without professional help, there is a lot that you can do. Think of this as first aid in the case of an accident. If you know first aid, you might not be able to do everything, but you can do a lot of good before the professionals with all the gear come along to make everything right.

Here’s what to do if you come across a flooded patch in your carpets:

Step 1: Stop It at the Source

The very first thing you should do is to make sure that the source of the water that’s flooded your carpets is cut off. This means that you remove the thing that’s blocking the drain, turn off the tap, close the window – or in more serious situations, put a bucket under that leak or find something that can act as a sandbag to stop the floodwater coming in. In very serious cases of flooding, you may also need to ensure that nothing electrical is in the spot. Turn the power off at the mains if you have to. The last thing you want is to get yourself electrocuted while trying to salvage a flooded carpet. You’re worth more than even the most valuable antique Persian carpet.

Step 2: Soak It Up, Buttercup

You now need to absorb as much water as you possibly can. Do this by finding things that are more absorbent than your carpet fibres. Newspapers and towels are obvious solutions, but anything dry that’s made of cotton will do the job in very serious situations. Anything that can be thrown into the washing machine so the dirt can be used in extreme emergencies. Soak up as much as you can and take the water away. Keep on going until you can’t blot up any more liquid from the carpets or until you run out of absorbent things.

Step 3: Ventilation is Good for You

If you’ve got out as much water as you possibly can, then you need to let the natural principle of evaporation help get the water out of your carpets. Open the windows to let the breeze through (but not if this will allow more rain to get onto the carpets), turn on a fan, turn on the ventilator, turn on the heaters, open the door… anything that will move the air and/or warm it. If there’s just a small spot of flooding, you can use a hair dryer set to medium to help dry the carpet fibres.

Step 4: Book In a Professional

If the flooding in your carpets was anything other than minor (i.e., smaller than an A3 sheet of paper), then it’s probably best if you call in a professional carpet cleaner to remove the rest of the moisture. You may want to get the rest of your carpets deep cleaned at the same time. However, if you live in an area (in London or elsewhere) that has experienced flash floods, the demand for professional carpet care services may be heavy.

How Professional Carpet Cleaners Can Help Save Your Flooded Carpets

The reason why professional carpet cleaners are able to get more water out of your flood-damaged carpets than you can is because they have better equipment. Most carpet care gurus who do it for a living have powerful truck-mounted vacuums that extract huge amounts of moisture from absorbent carpet fibres. The strength of these vacuums goes way beyond what’s possible with a towel, a wet/dry vacuum cleaner or one of those hired DIY carpet cleaning machines.

What’s more, because carpet cleaning professionals are trained in everything to do with carpets, they’ll be able to give you good advice about how to finish drying your carpets and how long you need to avoid walking on them (if possible). The thing is that even if you think your carpet is perfectly dry if a bit of moisture lingers right down the bottom where you can’t feel it, this can still be enough for mould to grow in. If you put heavy furniture on that spot, then the carpet won’t dry out properly, and you can wind up with mould problems. Even walking on carpets can add extra dirt to a carpet that’s not properly dry.

In the very worst-case scenario, a professional carpet cleaner will be able to let you know if your carpets are too far gone to salvage, which will help if you have to put in an insurance claim.

The Story of Suds n’ Stripes – The Carpet Cleaning Firm Born in a Jiffy

Or Shall I Call It “A day in the Life of a Mischievous Carpet Cleaner in Cricklewood, NW2”

OK, so here is my blog. I plan to use it to tell stories from my life as they happen. Today I am giving you the story of the birth of a brilliantly-named business called Suds n’ Stripes. It’s owned by Benny Bristle (punt intended, lol), a mate of mine.

It was a typical day in Cricklewood, and our protagonist, a carpet cleaner by trade, was up to his usual tricks. He went by Benny “The Brush” Bristle, and he was known far and wide as the cheekiest bloke in all of NW2. A right ole character he was.

Benny had a routine. He’d start the day with a cup of Rosie Lee at the local Cafe Express (404 High Road, NW10 2DS), then head over to his job. But not before stopping by the local market for a bit of natter with the stallholders and a quick game of dominoes at The Beaten Docket on Cricklewood Broadway. You know the old Docket, right?

Today, Benny’s job was at a posh nosh restaurant, Belle Lounge, where he was tasked with giving the carpets a good old clean. Benny got to work, leaving a trail of soapy suds in his wake, much to the annoyance of the head chef, who was a right old grump.

But Benny didn’t let that spoil his day, he continued on with his mischievous ways, flicking suds at the waiters as they rushed by with plates of grub. The customers didn’t know what hit them, as Benny made sure to give them a good old squirt of his cleaning solution, leaving them covered in suds from head to toe.

As Benny worked his way through the restaurant, he noticed a familiar face sitting at a table in the corner. His old mate, Dave “The Dip” Dipsomaniac, had just been released from the nick after doing porridge for a bit of a dodgy deal.

Benny made his way over to say hello and catch up on old times, but he heard a commotion coming from the kitchen before he could even sit down. He rushed over to see what was happening and found that one of the kitchen staff had been covered in gravy from head to toe!

Benny quickly sprang into action, grabbing his cleaning equipment and mopping up the gravy and getting to work. But as he worked, he couldn’t help but notice that the kitchen staff were all wearing the same brand of shoes, a pair of Adidas trainers with three stripes. What was that??? Some new Run DMC trend or tribute?

Benny was a clever chap and had a plan. He filled up a bucket of suds and made his way over to the kitchen. He energetically gave the staff a good old soak, leaving them covered in bubbles from head to toe. Phew! I am glad I wasn’t there. It must’ve been a heck of an embarrassing situation.

As Benny returned to his mate, he couldn’t help but burst out laughing as the kitchen staff ran around like headless chickens, trying to escape the suds. Oi, oi, oi!

“That’ll teach them for wearin’ them fancy shoes in the kitchen,” Benny chuckled as he sat down with Dave. “Dave, mate, get us a couple of pints of bitter, please!”

Benny suddenly had a stroke of genius as they sat there, admiring their handiwork and reminiscing about old times. He turned to Dave and said, “I’ve got a great idea, mate. Why don’t we go into business together and start a carpet cleaning company? We can call it ‘Suds n’ Stripes’!”

“What you on about, mate?”, Dave was intrigued. He listened to Billy’s genius plan, consisting of a funny name and pretty much nothing more. “Alright, bruv. Sound like a plan. Let’s do it. I am in.”

And with that, the two mates clinked their glasses and laughed as they planned their next mischievous adventure in the world of carpet cleaning.

Benny and Dave’s carpet cleaning company ‘Suds ‘n’ Stripes’ was a huge success, they quickly became the talk of the town. So there it is today, cleaning soft furnishings and messing about. The Story of Billy “The Brush” Bristle’s outlandishly brilliant company name.

You know what, I need to give Old Billy a call. I haven’t seen him for ages. I will get on the dog and bone as soon as I finish today’s jobs in my lovely Cricklewood.

Ta-ta, for now, lads!

Carpet Cleaning Art in Cricklewood, North West 2

Hey everybody, how are you all doing?

Connor here. It’s been a privilege to build this new website of mine. Proudly born and raised in Cricklewood, NW2, I have been wanting to start sharing every step of my journeys into the beautiful world of masterfully cleaning finely crafted carpets, rugs and upholstery pieces. My part of town is full of wonderful properties, enjoying all sorts of different carpets and upholstery.

Yes, I am a carpet cleaner. And an artist at the same time. I enjoy what I am doing. It’s never boring. Quite the opposite. I find it quite amazing and exciting.

What I treasure the most is my new local Cricklewood acquaintances and their fine pieces of soft furnishings. I can spend an hour explaining to a customer the hows, whys, and whats of a beautifully made living room wool carpet. I talk about the construction, the history of the patterns, and the manufacturer’s specifics, and most of all I enjoy telling funny stories about my job experiences.

Yeah, NW2 can be a blessing. It can be a bit if a nuisance as well, although I don’t pay too much attention to negativity.

My main message to you people, today, is – I am available to clean your carpets and rugs Monday to Saturday. No Bank Holidays. Do you want to bring in your Cricklwweood home a bit of professionally performed cleaning art? Connor is your man. Just hit me with a message and I will get back to you with a few scheduling options.

If you are happy with my carpet cleaning work, and you have a friend or a family member, who needs their beautiful pieces of carpeting (or upholstery) professionally deep cleaned, please tell them about me. Thell them what you like about Connor, the local carpet cleaner in NW2, with a huge passion for cleaned carpet.

Look forward to serving you soon!