How To Remove Food Spots On Your Carpet
One of the common mistakes people make
when dealing with spills on a carpet is treating
them improperly and, therefore, causing
more damage to their carpets.
We are not going to go over how to treat each individual spot or spill in your carpet. There are so many different types of spots and stains it would be close to impossible to teach you how properly deal with each one of them.
But what we are going to do is give you some basic knowledge on what to do if you spill a drink or solid food on your carpet or something like ink.
The Best Way To Handle Food Spots On Your Carpet
The first thing you need to understand is that being attentive is really important. When you spill something onto your carpet you need to take immediate action. Do not wait for hours or days.
The longer you wait to deal with spots or stains the longer, usually, it takes to get them out of your carpet. And sometimes waiting too long will basically mean the stain might not come out.
So let's say you spill some coffee, or another liquid, on your carpet.
Do not let the coffee just sit there. If you respond quickly with a white terry cloth towel, and you can blot it up, you stand a much better chance of getting that coffee out of your carpet before it becomes a stain or becomes color loss.
And this is especially true if your carpet is well protected with carpet protector. If you do not have your carpets well protected then getting out spilled drinks and food is going to be much harder. But you can still get a lot of them out with the advice in this article.
What you want to do is take a white terry cloth towel, fold it in half, place the towel on the spill, and then stand on the towel or press down hard on the towel for about 15 seconds.
The idea is to transfer the coffee from the carpet to the towel as fast as you can. And you repeat this until you can no longer get any transfer from the carpet into the towel.
And to be even more sure you have gotten as much of the liquid
out of the carpet as possible, you can take a clean white terry cloth
towel and put it on the area of the spill and then put something
that weighs about five pounds or more and put that on the towel.
If there is wicking of any remaining liquid that you might not have
gotten out, it would wick from the carpet and into the towel.
If you use this method on all spills, including urine, you have a much greater chance of avoiding carpet stains.
Let's say you don't spill coffee, but you spill a semi-liquid such as gravy on the carpet.
Instead of using a white terry cloth towel on the carpet, as you would with a liquid, you should use a spoon and scoop up as much of the gravy (or any substance that has the consistency of gravy) as you can.
Once you have scooped up as much of the gravy as you can, you would then take the white terry cloth towel and continue to blot up the rest of the gravy.
And with this type of spot you can actually lightly mist the spot with water and continue to blot. In most cases you will not have a spot or stain in your carpet if you follow this procedure correctly.
Now let's go over a really tough one to deal with properly and that
is ink that gets onto your carpet.
The only advice we are going to give on ink spots in your carpet is to
leave them alone and call a professional, preferably Linton's Carpet
Cleaning.
Ink can be super tricky to deal with. Lots of times ink gets spilled
and it is still - how should we put this - in an "ink droplet."
If this droplet is blotted aggressively, or any type of alcohol or spotting agent is put on the ink, the droplet disperses and now you have a serious ink spot that has spread.
Leave ink alone unless you are positive you can get the ink out safely. It is just a much better idea to call a professional - a professional with
many years of experience in getting ink spots out of carpets.
Those are the basics when it comes to any type of spill in your carpet. If
you follow these recommendations you avoid having a carpet that is full of
spots and stains.
Remember, spots are not stains but can eventually turn into stains. Spots
are on the outside of the fibers. Stains are color additions that have gotten
into the dye sites of fibers.
And in some cases what you are seeing is not a spot, not a stain - but color
loss. You can find out more about color loss in carpet by clicking the link.
But, in the end run, there are going to be spots that you are not going to
be able to get out of your carpet and that is when you should call a professional.
In over 20 years of carpet cleaning we have seen many carpets ruined by wrong carpet spotting procedures. If you are not 100% sure on how to SAFELY get a spot or stain out of your carpet - do not touch it. Call a professional.
Call Us Today For The Absolute Best Carpet Spot and Stain Removal Service In Vancouver
At Linton's Carpet Cleaning we have over 20 years of experience when it comes to cleaning carpets and getting out tough food spots and stains. Without sound arrogant:
"If we can't get the spot or stain out - there is a good chance no one can get it out"