Area rugs are not just a means for beautifying your rooms but also protecting the floors. These also ensure a cozy vibe. You sit on it while watching your favorite show or reading a book, your kids and pets play sitting on the rug all day long. Area rugs are spacious than any bed, couch, or chair, thus used and abused the most.
You spill drinks while concentrating on your project, the kids drop foods, pets are peeing on it, and kids and pets, even your Mr., need no permission to step up on the rugs with dirty feet, even slippers. It is highly unlikely for you to continually send your area rugs to professional cleaners or call them to clean every second day. It is costly and completely superfluous.
DIY with or Without Cleaner Machine
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The better way is to clean the area rugs all by yourself with products you already have in your house or washing the rugs with a high-quality area rug cleaner machine and carpet cleaning solution.
Regular Cleaning
Regular cleaning of the area rugs is tough but vital for a few reasons.
For The Area Rugs to Last
If you have placed area rugs all over the house, you have a lot to clean. In the middle of the living room, under and around the furniture, a few in the kitchen, there is no one place to place the rugs. And the best way to ensure a long life shelf of area rugs even after rough use is always to keep them clean.
For Your Kids and Pets
The area rugs snare dirt and dust in between the fibers pretty quickly. That dirt and dust are harmful to you and your kids and pets too. And it ruins the rugs slowly from within. So, removing the dust from the area rugs is essential for your own good. And to upkeep the area rugs as well.
To Avoid Staining
It’s mandatory to immediately clean the spot where you have stains, spilled drinks, dropped food, sticky mess, and stuff like that. Never let a wet mess dry on the area rugs. It’s the worst you can do to the mats. It will turn into stubborn stuck-on dirt, reach deep in the carpet, and will stain the rugs badly.
To Lessen the Hard Work
Moreover, the effort you will have to put into cleaning the spots will be too much and too time-consuming if you skip regular cleaning. And still, the stain might not get removed. Neither the rugs will get their original color back.
Mandatory – A Vacuum Cleaner
To make it easy for yourself, you must invest in a powerful carpet vacuum cleaner. The tool will make the daily dusting easy for you. But, first, let us make things easy for you. If not daily, try dusting the area rugs at least four times a week.
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Alternative – Carpet Brush
We assume you have a vacuum cleaner and are frequently dusting the area rugs. If not the vacuum cleaner, you can use the carpet brush to do the dusting. It is not as effective and easy as a vacuum cleaner but will dust down to a decent extent.
When to Deep Clean the Area Rugs
Remember, you need to do the dusting quite often and must clean the spilled mess pronto. But when it comes to deep cleaning, you must do it only when the area rugs need it. It will either stink or look so ugly that you will prefer throwing it away than sitting on it. And no, you are not going to wash area rugs like you wash your clothes. Neither will you use detergents or soaps to clean them.
Deep Cleaning Area Rugs DIY
Below are the very few steps to follow in cleaning your area rugs. So, know how to deep clean area rugs yourself and DIY.
Step #1 – Vacuum The Rug Thoroughly
Even though you are frequently dusting the area rugs, I mean, we already assumed that you do, you should. Anyhow, even after the daily dusting of the area rugs, you need to thoroughly do the dusting of the rugs to remove the loose dirt particles before deep cleaning them. It’s compulsory. Use your vacuum cleaner one more time, or the carpet brush, your wish.
Step #2 – Get A Safe Cleaner
You must get a safe carpet and rug cleaner. Some cleaning solutions stain and damage the rugs from within. If you are not sure about the cleaning solution, just use dishwashing soap. It is the mildest soap, thus safe and effective to deep clean the area rugs.
Step #3 – Spray the Cleaning Solution
Take a spray bottle and feel it with lukewarm water. Depending on the quantity of water, mix the dishwashing soap. You can take a gallon of water and mix a cap full of dishwashing soap in it. And then fill the spray bottle with that solution too. The measurement will be easier, and you will not need to make the solution again and again. Now spray the solution all over the carpet sparingly. Put some extra on the tough stains.
Step #4 – Brush The Area Rug
After letting the solution sit on the rug for 10-15 minutes, time to scrub it. The solution has already seeped in and is working to break the dirt, grime, and stains on the rug into fine particles. Scrubbing it with the brush will work to remove the particles from the carpet fibers altogether. Continue scrubbing until you notice dirty suds. The filthy foam will give it away to which extent the rugs are getting cleaned. The messier the suds, the better. Scrub the stains with a little extra effort. Otherwise, it will not be cleaned properly.
Step #5 – Rinse The Rug
You have removed all the dirt, and now you have dirty suds all over the rugs. Time to rinse it well with water; high-pressure spraying will be best. For that, you can use a garden hose in jet spray mode. Or you can spill clean water and once again brush the rugs. Do it repeatedly until you see yourself removing clean water from the rug.
Step #6 – Drying The Rug
Now, when the area rug is deep cleaned, free of all the grease, stain, dirt, and odor, but completely saturated, time to dry it. Make sure you dry one side at a time. Flip it only when one side is thoroughly dried. You might not need to scrub and clean both sides of the rugs but drying both sides is mandatory. When it’s fully dry, place it once again and adorn your room just like you did earlier.
A cleaning machine will surely save you a lot of time and energy, but we cannot always have it or arrange it. So, it’s good to know the easiest way of doing a chore manually. And as you can imagine, the process of cleaning an area rug all by yourself is time-consuming but not hard to do. So, do it and keep your area rugs clean, fresh, and sanitized.
