Disclaimer: A customer shared this story with us, and we post it with no editing.

I have never been good at cleaning – though, to be honest, I never tried particularly hard. So when I moved into my first leased apartment in Chelsea, I knew that I had some decisions to make. My landlady would not have enjoyed her property to turn into a little piece of a creative mess, and she made that abundantly clear when we signed the tenancy contract.

Of course, option number one was to try to keep my new home in a relatively decent sanitary condition myself. For a couple of months, I tried. It was annoying and time-consuming, but even more important than that – it was inefficient. I was picking up the wrong detergents, the vacuum cleaning did not seem to produce the expected results, and the carpet began to lose its comfortable, fresh look. Though I may have many flaws, stubbornness is not one of them. I knew when to ask for help, so I decided to book a house cleaner to do the cleaning chores for me. 

Booking The Wrong Person For The Job

In hindsight, the decision was correct – but the execution was awful. Instead of looking for a professional cleaner on the web, I listened to a friend who recommended an acquaintance. She was a mature lady with significant experience in the field of cleaning – at least that’s what he told me. After quickly checking the regular rates for a domestic cleaner and comparing to what we had negotiated, I thought the deal was excellent – I was getting a semi-professional for half the price. 

I should have known better – after all, the cheapest deals usually prove to be the worst. At first, everything seemed to be OK. Let me take that back – everything was much better than OK! My new cleaning lady and I worked a mutually beneficial schedule, by which I was buying some groceries and having a quick smoothie in the fresh-bar nearby while she was doing the chores. Since I was living in a small one-bedroom flat, she did not require more than an hour and a half. By the time I returned, she had finished with the sweeping, vacuuming, and polishing, and I paid her for the appointment.

As autumn settled in, I began noticing some worrisome signs. The dust polishing quickly deteriorated, and I thought there was no visible improvement in the carpets’ condition. To prove how inadequate I was at cleaning, I had always believed vacuuming is more than enough to keep the carpets in good shape. As it happens, ignorance is not always bliss.

Still, this did not help me understand why my cleaning lady was not doing as good of a job as she used to. Was she trying to make some easy money while sitting on my couch and watching the telly? I decided to find out. So one day I headed off for the supermarket as usual but came back fifteen minutes later. I had even left my wallet on purpose to have a ready excuse for my early return. To my relief, the lady was not sitting on the couch – but she wasn’t doing a particularly good job either. 

As I walked into the small living room, she was sweeping the carpet with a dry broom, raising thick clouds of dust in the process. Now, let me make something perfectly clear – I would be the last person to give cleaning advice. But even I knew that sweeping a dusty carpet is not a good idea – in fact, it defied common sense. It wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to understand why her cleaning effort had worsened. Earlier in the year, when it had been warmer, she had opened the large windows overlooking the small garden park nearby. By opening the apartment door as well, she had managed to create a draft that blew most of the dust away. But now that the temperature had dropped, her little trick had misfired. 

I did not see the point in having a row over it. I just picked up my wallet and told the lady to go on – but I knew this would be the last of her cleaning visits.

Solving The Problem With Some Professional Help

The episode, however, brought me back to the starting point. It also showed me that I needed to do something about the carpet or never solve my dust problem. After a quick search, it dawned on me that I had to book a carpet cleaner – no acquaintances or semi-professionals this time around. I called the highest-reviewed carpet cleaning contractor for Chelsea and scheduled the appointment. When the guy arrived, and I told him the brief resume of what happened, he shook his head in despair. “You would be surprised at how many people do exactly the same thing”, he said. “It is worse than doing nothing – those clouds of dust end up in either your lungs or clog the filters of the AC. Good thing you have booked a hot water extraction.”

It was the first time I heard the term. Now I am supposed to tell you all about its effectiveness and advantages the other carpet cleaning methods. The truth is I hardly understood a word of the technical terms the guy was using. The results, however, were easy to see and even smell – the air became distinctly cleaner and dust-free, and it looked like someone had removed a thin grey screen from the carpet. And the treatment was much faster than I expected – the whole washing barely lasted thirty minutes. 

After he had finished, the cleaner took a business card out of his pocket and strongly recommended that I call the maid. “She is a true professional and knows her job. Trustworthy too. And she will definitely not sweep your carpet with a dry boom”, he said with a friendly wink. Who knew I would score a double win – have my carpet refreshed and get the perfect cleaning lady all at once!

We all need some good news now and then. One bit of good news is that not everything that gets on your carpet is an utter disaster that ruins your carpet forever – and the same applies to upholstery. This isn’t just because it’s easy to call out a professional carpet cleaner who offers a good stain removal service but also because some stains are easier to get out of carpets than you might think. Even some very brightly coloured stains will come quite quickly out of carpet fibres.

Of course, there are still plenty of stains that require a bit of special treatment or even a lot of special treatment. Some need cautious handling to be removed and will need a bit of attention from a professional unless you REALLY know what you’re doing. For example, things like paint, nail polish and a permanent marker are tough to get rid of. However, as this article is all about the easy ones you can do yourself, we won’t think about those here apart from saying that they’re still not disasters, as a professional can usually get them out.

Golden Rules For All Stains

With all carpet stains of all types – and this applies to the difficult ones as well – the most important thing to do is to ACT QUICKLY. The longer a substance sits on the carpet or upholstery, the more it dries on and bonds to the fibres, making it permanent or difficult to remove. Most of the substances that stain carpets are wet or at least wettish, so if you can act while they’re still damp or keep them moist until the professional stain removal guru turns up, all may be well.

There are a few other things to bear in mind as well for all stains:

• If you don’t know what the stain is, use cold water just in case it includes one of those substances set by hot water.
• Don’t use too much water. Carpet backing, especially natural jute backings, are super absorbent, so if they get wet, they will stay damp for ages, and you’ll have problems with mould and musty odours. You may also be left with a watermark stain (don’t panic – this comes with deep carpet cleaning, such as steam cleaning).
• Try not to scrub. Your action should be more blotting than scrubbing. If you must scrub to get out a stubborn bit, do it gently and work from the outside to the inside of the stain. This way, the stain won’t spread beyond its original Ground Zero.
• Blotting is best done with something absorbent, such as an old towel or a paper towel, or even loo paper if you’ve got nothing else handy (especially if you’re one of those who ended up panic-buying heaps of the stuff with the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak – no shame; it’s a natural human reaction!).
• If you find that the process of removing the stain from the carpet or upholstery removes some dirt as well, leaving you with an embarrassingly clean spot that shows up just how grubby the rest of the carpet or couch is, then maybe it’s time you booked in a good carpet cleaning session!
• If you want to add something a bit more heavy-duty to remove a stain, stick to something reasonably gentle like dishwashing detergent (the sort for washing by hand, not the harsh stuff that goes in dishwashers) or shampoo. Bar soap tends to cling to carpet fibres and leave a mark.
• To dry your carpet fibres out after using water to remove the stain, try a combination of good ventilation, dehumidifiers or even pointing a hair dryer on a cooler setting at the spot until it’s touch-dry.

Scary-Looking Carpet Stains That Are Actually Wimps.

We now present our gallery of stains that may look like absolute tough guys when they hit the carpet in a careless moment but are relatively easy to remove…

Beetroot juice

This might have a deep, intense magenta colour, but it comes out fairly quickly. Think of how it comes out from clothing – just toss it into the wash, even a cold wash, and out it comes. Blot up as much as you can as soon as you can. After that, you can use a bit of cold water and maybe some dish detergent, if you must, to loosen the bright coloured juice and get it into your old towel.

Blood

Yes, I know you’ve seen plenty of cop shows, true crime shows and thrillers, and your mind has instantly gone to something gruesome. However, haven’t we all cut our fingers in a careless moment, had a nosebleed or discovered that a feisty tomcat had been in a fight after he jumped onto the couch to lick his wounds? There are many mundane, everyday ways to get blood on the carpet. Blot what you can, then use cold water – which must be cold, as hot water sets bloodstains – to loosen and remove the rest. If, however, there is an unfortunate lot of blood involved, after calling the cops or an ambulance (or both), then it might be better to leave the professionals to remove it… after the cops have done their thing in there if that’s what it involves (and I hope this never happens to you).

Coffee and tea

Blot like crazy, possibly with a spot of water. This may remove most of the spill, but there is likely to be a residue. If you have milk in your tea or coffee, you must ensure that all the milk is out as well, as it stinks like fury if it goes off. The best way to do this is to add more water to float the residue out – but not too much. You don’t want to make the carpet sopping wet. After blotting, try sprinkling a bit of salt onto the spill area, absorbing the water and residues. Sweep the damp salt up afterwards rather than vacuuming, and don’t let it sit on the carpet for long, or it may rust the tacks holding your carpet in place (rust is a beastly stain to remove).

Egg yolk

This is another protein stain, so cold water is what you need to avoid setting the stain in. A lot of the egg yolk can be scraped off with a spoon or similar (even your fingernails!), then use cold water and blot to remove the rest. If you have an earthy outlook on life and a dog, then call the dog to eat the stain. Then all you’ll have to remove is the dog slobber (blotting with a damp cloth, plus a teeny bit of disinfectant if you wish).

Jam

Start by scraping off the excess and calling the dog in. Even with the dog’s help, some sticky residue will be left. You will need to add a drop of detergent and a tiny bit of water as a damp cloth to sponge out the rest, blotting it away with a fresh cloth. You may need to repeat the process of detergent plus damp cloth followed by blotting a couple of times.

Toothpaste

I don’t know how you got toothpaste on the carpet or upholstery, but at least it comes out easily (scrape, dampen and blot as usual). The only trouble with getting toothpaste on the carpet or the upholstery is that the process of getting it out will usually remove dirt as well, leaving you with a clean spot – an un-stain – showing you how badly you need to get that carpet or couch professionally cleaned!

If you’re one of the many around the world who has to work from home courtesy of shelter in place or quarantine restrictions with the current pandemic, you’re certainly not alone. Who would have thought that WFH would become such a widely recognised abbreviation? When you work from home and have to work out how to keep the kids quiet when you’re in a Zoom meeting and all the new challenges of the new system, there are also a few upsides. You can work in your pyjamas (as long as your top half looks neat for the camera) or on the couch, and nobody cares if you have a very, very fragrant curry for lunch, as long as you share.

However, they will care if you spill the curry. And so they should. Carpet stains aren’t a joke, and they aren’t something you can be slack about, even if you can get away with being slack about doing your hair in quarantine. If you don’t do something about that stain, it will permanently set in the carpet and be there long after this pandemic is nothing but a memory.

In normal circumstances, if you get something on your carpet, you’d be able to send for a professional carpet cleaner to deal with it if you either didn’t have the time to tackle it or if you didn’t know how to do it. That’s why many carpet cleaning companies offer emergency stain removal services. However, during the restrictions, carpet cleaners may not be able to come to you because of the social distancing rules (if you’re not sure, contact the carpet cleaners in your area and ask them). This means that you may have to do something about that stain yourself – or at least get rid of the worst of it and then know what NOT to do so when all the craziness is over, it will be more straightforward for a professional to remove.

How Not To Treat A Stain

If you’ve spilt something messy and sticky on the carpet or the upholstery, two techniques are usually your friends in the world of cleaning… but not for removing stains from carpets. These are hot water and a vacuum cleaner. Leave these to one side for the most part when dealing with stains. But why?

Let’s look at the vacuum cleaner first. It might be tempting and seem super simple to vacuum up the mess off the carpet, even if it is something wet and sloppy. This is a terrible idea. If your vacuum cleaner is the sort that has a paper dust bag inside it, anything wet will make the bag disintegrate, and whatever’s in it will go everywhere and will probably damage the workings of your machine. Even in the case of a bagless vacuum, you still end up with the problem of the wet stuff getting all over the inside of the head, the hose and the dust compartment. This would be bad enough if what you were slurping up was just water because water would trap dust and the like and leave you with build-up on the inside, which could lead to blockages (kind of like plaque inside the arteries of someone who’s had a lifetime of smoking, fast muck food and no exercise). However, what’s on your carpet probably isn’t just water but stickier and more substantial. This will get into your vacuum cleaner, and you will probably never get it out, meaning that you’ll get the smell of whatever it was every time you turned the vacuum cleaner on. If what you were trying to remove from the carpet was something noxious like pet pee or vomit, do you really want your house to smell like that every time you vacuum? Put that vacuum back in the cupboard for now.

What about hot water? While hot water usually has extra cleaning power (which is why professional carpet and rug cleaners always offer steam cleaning services), it can be a problem with certain stains. Any stain involving protein – the most common are blood and egg yolk – will set into the carpet fibres if cooked in. On top of that, if your carpets are made from wool, a combination of heat and acid is just what’s needed for dyeing the wool, as a keen crafter could tell you. This isn’t what you want if you’ve spilt soft drink or food colouring on the carpets – in these circumstances, heat is your enemy. Stick to cold water only and don’t use hair dryers or irons until the end of the job, and even then, only use heat if you’re 100% certain that the stain doesn’t involve protein or acid.

Steps For Treating A Stain The Right Way

For any stain, no matter what it is, these are the basic steps that you need to follow:

1. Scrape, scoop or blot up as much of the stain as you can.
2. Lightly dampen the area so that (a) the stain stays soft rather than drying in place, (b) the carpet fibres will absorb the water in preference to the stain and (c) the water will loosen some of the gunk so that you can remove it more easily. USE COLD WATER.
3. Blot up the water with a paper towel or cloth towel. This will often remove some of the stains.
4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until you’ve got out as much of the stain as possible.

In many cases, this procedure will get out quite a lot of stains, although it will take a fair bit of patience and time. Some common stains like beetroot juice, blood, children’s paints, soft drink and even red wine will come out from the carpet this way, as long as you get onto the stain as soon as you can.

Other stains may need a bit of extra treatment. Here are a few things that you can try at home that will help:

• For greasy stains (fat, oil, crayons, etc.), add a little soap to the mix and scrub very gently. You can use warm water to activate the soap, but this should be as hot as the inside of your elbow.
• For permanent marker, use some methylated spirits, hair spray or vodka (or similar strong spirits) to dissolve the ink before blotting it up.
• To get candle wax off the carpet, cover the carpet with a thick wad of loo paper or about three paper towels, then use an iron on the lowest setting on the spot. The heat will melt the wax, and the paper towel will absorb it. Then treat the spot as you would for greasy stains.
• For bubble gum or Blu-tack, apply ice to the spot to freeze the wretched stuff solid so you can pick it off a bit more easily. Then treat like you would for greasy stains.
• For nail polish, if the carpet or rug is made from natural materials, use a little nail polish remover and take it off like you would from your nails. Nail polish remover doesn’t play very nicely with carpets made from synthetic materials, so if you don’t know what your carpet or rug is made of, then don’t try this, or you may wreck the carpet.
• For anything really smelly, after you’ve removed it, sprinkle baking soda on the spot to absorb the smell. Leave it there for about 15 minutes. Then sweep up the baking soda; don’t vacuum it.
• In the case of something really revolting and organic that’s likely to leave nasty bacteria (pee, poop and vomit), add a little disinfectant to the cold water to sanitise the area.

As you can see, a stain on your carpet is not the end of the world (well, your fine fibre loving world, in particular). You have a few options to neutralise the damage and help with the first help of your soft furnishing. However, if you want to be 100% on the safe side, you need to call in the carpet cleaning cavalry.

Bette be safe than sorry.

I know it is a blunt statement. It is true though. Countless times we have encountered half finished, barely started carpet cleans that badly scream “Help, I need a professional carpet cleaner to take care of me!”

Well, not literally, but you get the point.

I know it is cheaper to go to Tesco’s and buy a bottle of Vanish, a bottle of 1001, a few clothes and start squirting and rubbing those stains away. If only it were that simple to remove, then professional carpet shampoo companies in London (and anywhere else for that matter) would have been long gone out of business. Fact is, they are still live and kicking, in the face of yours truly, and many others brothers in wand.

OK, here is the kicker. A small cleaning and rubbing and spotting job with a supermarket grade consumer carpet cleaning chemical is nowhere near the effectiveness and quality of the professional stain removal equipment carpet cleaners use. Not even close and therefore not standing a chance.

In fact, a professionally booked and carried out job, will cost you less in the long run (or a lot less, if you happen to ruin your carpet or rug, which is highly likely).

For those to whom this is a no brainer, we salute you!

For those  to whom they think it is a waste of money and would rather have a shot at DIY carpet cleaning in London, be our guests…or shall we put it this way – we shall soon be your guests, whether you like it or not.

Be smart, get it done professionally!

Get in touch with Topsafe Carpet Cleaners in London today.