What Should You Do to Clean Up Spills on Your Carpet?

Don’t you just hate it when something stains your carpet? It looks so unsightly and you know that everyone is noticing it. Most people are always looking for tips they can use to clean their carpets and remove stains to keep their home looking clean, especially families with children. Children are hard on carpets. There’s no way to get around the fact that children and spills seem to go hand-in-hand. Stains appear like magic, and when you try to find out what happened, the old "not me" creature will appear to take the rap. To counteract the stains that you’re going to find if you have children, you may have to try some different ways of removing them.

If you plan to use a commercial carpet cleaning product on a stain, always read the directions first. If you do, you’ll most likely find that a general carpet cleaner is not recommended for spot cleaning. You need special spot cleaners, and even those come in different types for different spills. Read on for tips on cleaning spills without using chemical carpet cleaners.

Let’s say you have company, and someone accidentally spills a container of wine, soda, coffee, or beer. What you should do is immediately blot the area with paper towels or rags to remove all the liquid you can. Then mix a solution of one quarter cup of white vinegar and three quarters of a cup of water. Soak the spot with this mixture, and then blot the area to remove all traces of moisture.

With fruit juices you want to blot up the extra liquid or use a wet vacuum on it if you have one. Once the juice has dried, re-saturate it with a half teaspoon of dish soap mixed a quart of water. Apply this to the spot, and blot well. Reapply the solution if necessary. After you’ve completely removed the stain you can rinse the area with clean water and blot dry.

You can’t raise children without having incidents which will leave blood and vomit on your carpets. Start by once again blotting the area as much as possible. Mix 1 tablespoon of ammonia and three quarters cup of cold water in a spray bottle, and thoroughly saturate the stained area. You want the area to be wet, but you don’t want to spray so much that the wetness soaks through into the carpet backing and pad. After spraying, blot the moisture away. Re-spray if necessary. This method will also work on ketchup stains.

Another inevitable carpet stain you’ll have with children will be paint or crayons. Once again, take as much of it out of your carpet by blotting as you can. Then use a white cloth or a cotton ball soaked in alcohol and blot some more. You may have to repeat the procedure a few times to get the stain. Just be sure that the moisture stays above the carpet backing. After you’ve blotted up the alcohol, mix a quart of water with a half-teaspoon of dish soap. Apply a little of this to the spot and blot dry.

It's always best to try any carpet cleaning solution, store-bought or home-made, on a small piece of carpeting that is out of site to make sure the product you're using won't damage the carpet. Different types of carpet fibers react differently to each product, so find out what is safe to use on your carpets.

Cleaning carpet stains is never easy, and it can become a little tedious wetting and blotting an area over and over, but your carpet is an expensive item to replace, and if you want to keep it nice for a number of years, you need to take care of the stains as soon as they happen.

Do you want to know more about carpet cleaning tips? Carpet Cleaning Care also has information on carpet cleaning services and maintaining your carpets.