Carpets can be a great, cozy addition to a house. They’re soft, comfortable, warm, and safe for young kids and pets to play on. Carpets can also be complicated to care for, however. From spilled liquid soaking in to tracked mud and dirt becoming noticeable stains to the difficulty of picking up fuzz, lint, food, and hair from the clingy floor, they need to be cleaned often. While many of us clean our carpets rather often with store-bought sprays and a vacuum cleaner, such methods don’t always work, and that’s why professional carpet cleaning exists.

How Often Should You Have Your Carpets Professionally Cleaned?

Though there’s a general metric for how often carpets should be professionally cleaned, the exact details can vary from house to house and person to person based on cleaning habits, lifestyle, and even the color of the carpet. We’ll go over the details, but the basic answer, as provided by The Carpet and Rug Institute, is to have your carpets professionally cleaned every 12 to 18 months. So, if you haven’t gotten your rug cleaned in over a year, it might be a good time to consider it, no matter how clean your habits are.

Lifestyle Factors

Your living situation and lifestyle can have an impact on how soon you should have your carpets cleaned. Most of these factors involve having dirt and grime being tracked onto the carpet, which then stays there, decreasing the lifespan of your carpet as well as the health and cleanliness of your home.

You will probably need additional cleanings if you have young kids or pets. Animals can leave muddy prints, shed everywhere, and leave messes due to accidents; all these things can dirty up a carpet fast, no matter how often you clean up. Meanwhile, little kids can be messy and are likely to create spills and stains that damage your carpet.

More cleanings can also be helpful if you or someone you live with has allergies. Dust, pet hair, and other allergens can collect on your carpet. These can become airborne again when someone walks over them, creating a cycle of allergens that makes them hard to get rid of. Having a professional clean your carpet more often allows you and your loved ones to enjoy healthier, happier lives.

Wearing shoes indoors, especially on carpet, is a very easy way to track dirt, mud, snow, leaves, and more into your house. While you might be diligent about cleaning up these messes, allowing people to wear their shoes on your carpet will likely result in you having to get a professional’s help sooner than others.

Cleaning Habits

The other factor in determining when someone has to clean their carpet is how often they already do, as well as what supplies they use and how well they use them. Not cleaning very often or not being very thorough when doing so means that a dirty carpet is likely to continue being dirty even after a pass with a vacuum or a few sprays with a carpet cleaner.

Using the wrong cleaner for your specific type of carpet might just damage the carpet itself, and at best, you still may not get the stain out. For example, if you clean stains incorrectly, then you might not actually be removing the stain completely. Don’t think that this can be fixed just by cleaning more aggressively, either: scrubbing too hard can damage your carpet’s fibers while pushing stain-causing substances down further into the carpet. Improper stain removal tends to leave behind greater messes, which may only be fixed with the aid of a professional cleaning service.

How often you vacuum also plays a role, as failing to vacuum often enough means that your carpet likely has a lot of hair, dust, food particles, and more trapped in the fibers. You are not protecting your carpet as well as you could be if you only vacuum when things look dirty, which means you’re more likely to need the help of a professional.

Hiring a Professional

Now that you’re thinking more about how to clean your carpet and your carpet needs professional cleaning, you might also be wondering if there are any professional carpet cleaners near you, what other services they hire, and how expensive their work is. After all, it’s likely that if you want to clean your carpet, you’ll also want to start cleaning other things too, such as your dirty kitchen sink or dusty office shelves. Trustworthy Cleaning Services is the service for you. Call today to get a free quote.