Cleaning your carpet may be daunting, but it’s a necessity nevertheless. It reduces bacteria within the household, which lessens the likelihood of allergies, keeps your house safer, and elongates your carpet’s lifespan! So not only does it improve your health, but it also saves you money.
But how often should you clean your carpet? That answer depends on a lot of different factors:
- How often do you use your carpet?
- How crowded is your household?
- What type of carpet do you have?
The safest answer is to vacuum your carpet twice a week and clean it every six months.
However, the answer can range from vacuuming once a week to daily and cleaning it once a year to every three months.
So sit tight, and get ready to analyze!
If You Have Kids or Pets
When you have kids or pets, your carpets are prone to many accidents. For example, the kids will frequently bring in dirt from playtime, spill food, and leftover play dough will be left on the carpet.
So, it isn’t a surprise that people with kids or pets will need to clean the carpets more frequently.
If you have kids, it is best to clean your carpet every six months and vacuum it daily or four times a week. It is also best to get a deep clean every year.
If you have pets, your carpet will need more attention because of the dander and mites on their fur. So, you’ll need to clean your carpet every three to six months and vacuum it daily. As for deep cleaning, twice a year is more than enough.
If you have both kids and pets, it is best to clean it every three months and vacuum it daily. Deep cleaning it from all the stains at least once a year will also keep it in perfect condition!
If You Have Allergies
Unfortunately, carpets are very good at storing dust and allergens. So if you have allergies, you’ll find yourself commonly sneezing and coughing if you neglect cleaning your carpet.
Allergies are very easy to trigger, so people with allergies need to pay extra attention to their carpets.
The best thing to do is vacuum your carpet daily with a HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air technology) vacuum that uses advanced technology to improve suction.
You will also need to clean your carpets every two months or deep clean them every three months.
Since deep cleaning can be expensive, it’s best advised to clean the carpet every two months. However, whether you should clean it yourself or deep clean it professionally mainly depends on how bad your allergies are.
Light Coloured Carpets
Lighter colours often get stained very easily. You’ll also notice that white carpets might change to a little off-white after a while. How do you avoid that? Frequent cleaning!
Vacuuming twice a week is more than enough to get all the dust and dirt out of there. And cleaning your carpet every six months will maintain its brightness and keep debris from accumulating.
High-Frequency Carpets
What is a high-frequency carpet? A carpet that comes into contact with shoes very frequently.
Examples of high-frequency carpets can include:
- In an office space.
- In an apartment of four or five roommates.
- In a hallway.
- In the doorway.
These carpets encounter a lot of different shoes every day. So naturally, they gather up much more dirt and dust.
So, you’ll need to vacuum these carpets twice a week and clean them twice a year. Unless the carpet comes into contact with anything other than food crumbs or dirt from shoes, deep cleaning is not a necessity.
However, if you’d prefer deep cleaning, once every 18 months is more than enough.
Low-Frequency Carpets
Now that we’ve explained what high-frequency carpets are, can you guess what a low-frequency rug is?
A low-frequency carpet is a carpet that does not come into contact with a lot of shoes. Examples include:
- In the guest bedroom.
- In corners of rooms.
Since these carpets don’t get a lot of activity, they won’t gather up as much dirt and dust. Therefore, they won’t require frequent cleaning.
So, low-frequency carpets need to be vacuumed only once a week and cleaned once a year. As we mentioned before, deep cleaning is not required.
Optionally speaking, deep cleaning once every two years would suit low-frequency carpets.
How to Properly Clean Your Carpet
You’ve read on and on about how frequently you should vacuum and clean your carpet, but all that effort will be wasted if you don’t know how to do it efficiently!
Here are some tips about vacuuming and cleaning that will make the biggest difference!
Vacuuming Efficiently
To vacuum efficiently, here are three helpful tips:
- Go over the area more than once. Dirt will often build up on the carpet, so going over the area once only sucks up one or two layers of dirt when there could be three or four.
- Go over the area slowly. Going over the area slowly gives the vacuum time to suck up all the mites and dust.
- Dust the carpet before vacuuming. It’s much harder to suck up the settled dust when vacuuming. Dusting the carpet unsettles the dust, which makes it much easier to access. However, make sure to wear a mask while doing this, so you don’t breathe in any dust.
Cleaning Efficiently
While shampooing and steaming your carpet, make sure to take these tips into account:
- Don’t overwet your carpet. Overwetting your carpet causes different issues like discolouration and shrinkage. When cleaning your carpet, ensure that you use enough water to make it damp—not dripping wet.
- Don’t place furniture on a damp carpet. Make sure the carpet is fully dried before putting your furniture back on it, or it will leave an annoying stain.
So When Should You Clean Your Carpet?
At the end of the day, it is mainly about your intuition. No one will know how frequently you should clean your carpet better than you because you’re the one using it!.
Simply take the three main factors we mentioned in the beginning into consideration and determine how often you should clean your carpet.
And when in doubt, don’t be afraid to experiment! If you noticed that it suits you more to vacuum daily and clean once a year, then so be it.
