Carpet Cleaning Tips - Keep Your Precious Carpets Clean, Fragrant and Hygienic

Carpets and rugs bring a sense of warmth and comfort to your home so it's worth spending time and effort taking care of them.

Over time, though, they can become stained, smelly and dirty. Here are the best carpet cleaning tips to keep your home clean, sweet smelling and hygienic.

Properly looked after, carpets will give you and your family years of service and make your residence homely and cosy.

If neglected, they'll give off that stale, musty smell or even worse if you have pets. That's why you need a plan.

The first thing to do is to develop a regular vacuuming schedule. You need to vacuum clean your carpets at least once a week and more for areas that receive heavy foot traffic such as hallways and passages.

You'll need to go over each section more than once, especially if the pile is deep. It's important that your remove the ground-in dust and dirt quickly so it doesn't become embedded and hard to remove.

Regular vacuuming is one of the best carpet cleaning tips. It will extend the life of your precious carpets as well as keep them soft and clean.

Children love carpets for softness. But if you have kids in your home, you need to take special care with your flooring. Spills are part of life for families with young children. Whether it's food, drink, paint, candy or gum, or worse, it tends to find its way into your carpets.

You need to remain ever vigilant for these stains and deal with them as quickly as possible. Keep a regular carpet cleaner on hand to promptly clean stains as they occur. You have to bear in mind that different types of stain require different treatments. One that works with chewing gum might not be so effective with paint, for example.

Pets bring joy to every home but they don't do your carpets any good. Cat urine, for example, gives an appalling odor and an unsightly dark yellow stain. If your carpets are dark or the urine has sunk deep into the pile, you may need a black UV light to spot the stain. (Your nose is also a good guide).

You need to deal with it as quickly as possible. A fast solution is to use baking soda which is an effective "smell absorber". Here's how you do it.

• First dry the area as much as possible with paper towels. Try to absorb all the excess urine.
• Then sprinkle some clean water over the area and add baking soda.
• You then need to let it dry.
• When dry, use a broom to loosen the soda which has now absorbed most of he urine.
• Finally, vacuum the area to get rid of the soda debris.

You can also use vinegar as a cat urine odor remover and cleaner. Just mix with warm water and pour over the affected area. Leave overnight and then vacuum or brush.

Another thing to remember is that dust mites like your carpets as much as you do. They burrow down deep into the pile and make their homes there. Safe in their deep burrows, they're a common source of allergens. As they're so deep in the carpet fibers, it's hard to remove them using standard cleaning methods. The best answer is the steam cleaner.

In fact a steam carpet cleaner works effectively with all kinds of carpet stains. Using powerful jets of scalding steam, they can quickly and safely remove mites, mold and stains of all kinds. As they use no chemicals or detergents, they're very environmentally friendly. They're economical, too, as all you use is water from the tap.

A steam cleaner is one of the finest investments you can make to keep you home clean and hygienic. You can use it on all types of surfaces such as curtains, tiles, grout and upholstery. This way, it can be the only home cleaning accessory you need.

Probably the best of these carpet cleaning tips is to invest in a home steam cleaner. A regular steam carpet cleaning session is all you need for a clean and fragrant home.