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Avoid Carpet Stain Disasters
When the inevitable happens… respond quickly and keep your carpet in perfect condition.
By Dan Worley, of Clean Interiors Pittsburgh Pa
Imagine this scenario… you are hosting a small party of your best friends and the red wine and snacks are being served.
One of your friends bumps into another and an entire glass of Merlot dumps all over your off-white Saxony carpet. This is the same carpet you purchased just last year for your entire house, and spent as much money on as you might for an inexpensive new car.
You watch in agony as, despite your best attempts to blot up the wine, the red stain starts to get bigger… and bigger… and bigger.
You go to the cabinet under your kitchen sink and start to try virtually every cleaning product you have. No matter what you do, the red stain seems to have made a permanent residence in your carpet.
So you call a professional carpet cleaner. He arrives the next day and works feverishly on the stain. He is able to remove most of it, but there is a “haze” of red that just won’t budge.
What happened? Isn’t he supposed to be a professional?
It’s all your fault!
That’s right… by using a variety of cleaning products and not just the one that was “right” for the stain, you might have “set” the stain and made it more difficult for the professional to remove.
Although this is technically your fault, you shouldn’t be blamed. After all, anyone that spills red wine on white carpet is going to try to remove it quickly, and with whatever cleaning solutions are available.
The right stuff
There is something you can do when you have a fresh spill on your carpet. Something that you can do every time, no matter what is spilled, that virtually ensures that your professional carpet cleaner can remove the stain.
Virtually every home has a supply of table salt. That’s your key to successful stain removal.
We’re not talking about creating a recipe using salt. As you might know, salt is an absorbent compound — it will absorb liquids much like a sponge, although much slower.
When you spill something on the carpet, simply pour table salt on it. The more the better. The salt will absorb the stain and when your carpet cleaner arrives, he can vacuum the salt off of the carpet and then remove the remaining stain much easier.
By doing this, you avoid using cleaning solutions that can actually set the stain and ensure that your valuable investment — your carpet — is secure for years to come.
Dan Worley is the owner and operator of Clean Interiors. He has 14 years of experience and is an Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) certified technician. Dan can be reached at (412) 414-3828 or via e-mail at dan@cleaninteriors.us Visit his website at www.cleaninteriors.us .
