The Best Carpet Cleaning Method For...

When you decide to put heavy fluffy fabric that weighs a couple of hundred pounds on your floor and walk all over it all day, you're going to have to pay the price for that luxury by dealing with all the cleaning challenges that come up. And do they ever come up! If you're looking for the best carpet cleaning method for this, that or the other kind of stain, read on.

Yes, mud, pee, beer - all these things are likely to get on your carpet, and these can be a challenge. But these aren't half the challenge the real stains are. What do you do when someone decides to drip candle wax on your carpet? Or if they drop warm and soft chocolate on it? How about blood, or butter or chewing gum?

Those are the real challenges. Especially when they decide to step on the chewing gum after they drop it.

Let's get with them one by one. Candle wax isn't as hard a problem as it might seem at first. You mustn't ever try to scratch it off with your nails or something. You will only work the material deeper in. Instead, try to remember how when wax is cold, it really hardens and becomes difficult to break off. That's the kind of thing you're looking for. How do you get a wax drip on your carpet to get cold and hard like that?

Well, you could bring an ice cube in and really apply it there for a while. When the wax drip gets really cold, gently scrape it off. It should probably break right off.

Butter is much easier. Butter’s easy because it's fat, and there are all kinds of detergents and other cleaning agents that can dissolve fat. So what is the right kind of cleaning agent to use? The best carpet cleaning method for butter is to use dry cleaning fluid. Clean up as much of the butter as you can with a tissue and to the mess that you see remaining, apply dry-cleaning fluid repeatedly. Mop it up with a wet rag and run a vacuum cleaner over it to dry up. That should take care of it.

Chewing gum is a problem. There's no really good method for chewing gum. Most people don't realize this, but manufacturers make specialized heavy-duty equipment just for chewing gum removal. In public places like shopping malls and movie theaters, chewing gum removal is a real problem that needs dedicated equipment. This equipment injects superheated steam on chewing gum so that it just melts the stuff up.

At home, your best bet is to freeze it. Once again, bring out the ice cubes. Freeze it and harden it as much as possible and just try to take it off. Most of the time, this is the best carpet cleaning method for it.