When To Give Up Cleaning Your Carpet And Just Replace It
Carpeting; it is nice and soft and wonderful to have. However, kids and pets will destroy it. You can do all you can to preserve the carpeting and try to keep it fresh with professional rug cleaning services, but eventually, you will have to throw in the towel. Here are signs that your old carpet needs replacing instead of another shampoo.
After the Last Wash, the Carpet Still Looks Old and/or Dingy
Carpet and rug cleaners do their best, but light-colored carpets cannot be restored after ten or more years' worth of wear, tear, and cleaning. Short of adding a bleaching solution to their cleaning machines, your carpet is just outlived its original color. Time to replace it and update it.
The Carpet Is OLD
Any carpeting older than ten years should be replaced. By then, the style, the color, and even its "stain resistance" are outdated and worn out. Without its original ability to resist stains, this old carpet will stain faster, and the stains will be nearly impossible to remove if they can be removed at all. Most carpet cleaning services ask questions about the age of your carpeting so that they can prepare you for the possibility that last night's glass of red wine probably is not going to come out.
It SMELLS
Carpeting that needs to go absorbs all odors like clothing absorbs cigarette smoke. It smells awful. It even smells awful three days after being professionally cleaned and deodorized. That is not the fault of the cleaners, nor is it the fault of the products the cleaners used. It is just your carpet, signaling to you that it needs to go. If it is really bad, you can and will smell your carpet the minute you open the front door.
Flooding
Flooding in your home always ruins carpet. Even if you get a professional cleaner out right away to suck all the excess water out of the carpeting and then "dry-clean" the carpet, you may be missing bacteria, mold, and mildew spores trapped under the carpet padding. What is trapped quickly multiplies under the warm, dark, and mildly moist carpet, eventually coming to the surface and staining the carpet in very undesirable ways.
Your best bet is to dry the carpet as quickly and as much as possible. Make sure it is thoroughly dry. Then rip it out and replace it after you have carpet cleaners clean the bare floors underneath. For more information, contact your local rug cleaning services.