How Often Should Carpet Be Professionally Cleaned?

This obviously won’t apply to everyone, but for those in a position where you have new carpet that may still be covered under warranty, this is CRITICAL.  Most manufacturer warranties will have specific verbiage included in the terms/conditions that will specify the cleaning requirements.  In most cases, manufacturers will require professional steam cleaning once a year, but be sure to verify with your specific warranty documentation to avoid any surprises once it’s too late.

Although having to vacuum frequently really sucks (see what I did there), the reality is that this is one of the best ways to help make sure that your carpet stays in the best possible condition.  Carpet deteriorates as the carpet fibers break down over time due to abrasion and wear.  FYI - this is also what happens to knees… as I am realizing with age.  Unfortunately, this is unavoidable and will ultimately lead to replacing your carpet (and knees).  However, the deteriorating process can be greatly slowed down by maintaining a regular vacuuming regiment.  This is helpful because vacuuming removes much of the dirt and debris that causes abrasion to the carpet fibers.  This improves the overall carpet wear and helps make sure that you get the maximum life out of your carpet.  Not to mention that infrequent vacuuming is just gross.  If you have a strong aversion to vacuuming, try this:  Skip vacuuming for 5 days, get a high powered magnifying glass, and have a close look at the community of gunk that has taken up residence in your carpet!  WARNING:  This will be a frightening experience… so be prepared.  Your resistance to vacuuming will be cured and you’ll gladly put forth the effort to rid your carpet of that filth on a regular basis.  If only it was that easy to solve the knee problems.

You might think it strange to lump pets and kids together, but let’s be honest, both of them are on pretty equal footing when it comes to wrecking your carpet!  Most pets aren’t using dandruff control shampoo, and hence, have a strong tendency to spread their dander all through your carpet.  Additionally, pets aren’t always the best at making sure they restrict all biological expulsions strictly to the outdoors.  They don’t mean to cause problems, but when Fido decides to eat deer droppings outside, it’s a pretty sure bet that later that night Fido will be making some sort of mess on your carpet.  And everything I just said about pets, is true of kids too… except hopefully for the deer droppings.  Seriously, kids just don’t care about taking care of your carpet and hardly notice when they create giant stains and smelly spills.  If you have pets and/or kids, then you will likely need to have your carpets professionally cleaned more often than the recommended once a year.  We recommend that you make your pets and kids work to earn the money to pay for the extra cleaning charges they incur… unless that’s against labor laws in your state.  

How much traffic moves through your carpeted areas on a regular basis?  This plays an important role in determining how often your carpets should be professionally cleaned.  For normal traffic patterns, the typical recommendation is that carpets should be professionally cleaned once a year.  If you don’t have much of a social life and people rarely come visit you, then you likely have pretty light traffic on your carpet.  This is one case where being anti-social may actually work in your favor, because you could feasibly reduce the cleaning frequency to once every 18 months.  However, if your home is like Grand Central Station and every kid in the neighborhood strolls through your house on a regular basis, then undoubtedly you have high traffic on your carpeted areas.  If this is the case, then you should consider increasing the frequency of your professional carpet cleaning to every 8 months.  Again, these little monsters should be required to fund this additional cost and we recommend putting them to work… at least with odd jobs around the house.  Most of them are full of energy anyway, just direct that energy toward something productive, like yard work.  

As you might expect, the color of your carpet also plays an important role in determining the recommended timeframe for professional cleaning.  As a kid, my home was decked out with orange carpet, like many homes in my neighborhood in the early 80’s.  I found this to be particularly beneficial because it provided me with an easy way to clean off the finger residue left after eating my favorite snack, Cheetos.  Yep - I really did that for many years.  It’s one of those stories you tell your parents many years later when you are comfortably out of the danger zone for a good spanking.  Anyway, back to the subject at hand, lighter carpet will tend to show stains much more easily than darker carpet.  Thus, those with light carpet will  tend to require more frequent professional cleaning to deal with the inevitable stains that will develop over time.  If you have darker carpet, chances are that you could delay professional cleaning a bit longer because the stains are not as easily visible.  So, next time I get carpet, my plan is to purchase carpet that is the color of Georgia red clay… and then I’m set!