The crimes we commit against our carpets
It’s fair to say if your home has carpet, then you probably enjoy the soft cosy feeling under your feet.
There’s something really enjoyable about, waking up on cold morning, jumping out of bed and feeling the warm comforting carpet under your feet.
On the surface, it adds beauty to your home and helps create an ambiance and makes you feel good.
It’s funny how the carpet’s biggest advantage is also its worst enemy.
You see your carpet acts like a massive sink. It captures everything and holds it tightly, deep in your carpet.
Your carpet is like a giant filter trapping all the airborne particles, such as, dirt, dust, dust mites and their faeces, pollens, allergens, smoke, pollution, bacteria, pet acts etc.
If you listen closely you can hear it wheezing, choking to death on the accumulated filth in your carpets.
The good news is your carpet traps small particles in your carpet fibres and removes them from the air you breathe.
A recent scientific study found your carpet reduces the dust in the air by 50% compared with hard flooring systems.
It takes 10 times more energy to release these particles from your carpet, than from hard surfaces.
So at least your carpets are doing their job, by trapping these nasty, airborne particles, in your carpet. So you don’t stir them up as you walk through your home. (You’re not breathing these in because they’re being contained in your carpet.)
Are you doing your job?
Your carpet, like any filter needs cleaning regularly, so they work.
Studies have shown your carpet acts like a filter, trapping allergens and keeping them out of the breathing zone until removed through proper vacuuming and professional carpet steam cleaning. So removing allergens from your carpet actually contributes to a better indoor environment.
“Despite our healthy, outdoors self-image, Australians in fact spend 90 per cent of their time indoors, 7 per cent in cars and only 3 per cent outdoors”. says Mr Steve Brown of CSIRO Building Construction and Engineering.
Considering how much time we spend inside, you would think we would pay more attention to cleaning our carpets. It’s criminal!
Sadly, most homes we visit only get their carpets professionally cleaned when they look dirty.
They say beauty is only skin deep, but ugliness goes right down to the bone.
If you look at your carpet on the surface they look clean, it’s when you’re looking below the surface, and you see the ugly state of your carpets.
It’s not just the dirt particles it is everything else.
Under a microscope, your carpets are a thriving jungle of biological waste.
Your carpet looks like a living chemistry set. If you magnified your carpet you’d find the complete alphabet buried in your carpet.
Air Pollution, Allergens, Ash, Asphalt, Bacteria, Beer, Blood, Car Exhaust, Chemicals, Cooking Oil, Cordial, Crumbs, Dandruff, Decaying Food, Dirt, Dust, Dung, Ear Wax, Earth, Effluent, Excrement, Fertiliser, Food Particles, Fungus, Germs, Glue, Gravel, Grease, Grime, Grit, Hair, Hairballs, Honey, Husks, Iceblocks (that have melted), Impurities, Industrial Waste, Ink, Jacaranda Petals, Jam, Juice, Kaolin, Ketchup, Kitchen Waste, Leaves, Lees, Lint, Liquid, Makeup, Mildew, Mould, Mud, Muck, Nail Polish, Nappy Leaks, Nasal Spray, Nasty Little Bugs,, Odour, Offal, Oil, Pet Faeces Pet Stains, Pizza, Pollens, Pollutants, Quail Droppings, Quarry Dust, Quarks, Razor Sharp Grit, Rubbish, Rocks, Sand, Scum, Sediment, Skin Particles, Slime, Smoke, Snot, Soil, Soot, Sweat Tar, Tobacco, Tracked-in Dirt from Outside, Umber, Unseen Soils, Urine, Waste Products, Wine, Wood Dust, Worms, Vegemite, Vermin, Vomit, Xanthiums, Xenon, Yak Poo (a bit of stretch I know), Yeast, and Zillions of Dust Mites, Zinc Oxide (Sunscreen) and Zoo Poo.
I guess, you didn’t believe a list could be compiled from A to Z, of what’s hiding unseen in your carpet.
Yuk! Your family’s living in it, playing in it, walking in this disgusting filthy list.
It’s enough to make your skin crawl.
This isn’t a complete list, buried in your carpet, But I hazard a guess, if any of these were on your clothes, they’d be straight in the wash.
You wouldn’t be seen dead wearing clothes for 3 months straight, without even washing them. They would begin to look like grimy smelly rags. But why do we let our carpets suffer that same fate. It’s a crime how we treat our carpets.
Try to imagine the ghastly smell, and the awful colour, and what they’d look like, if you never washed your clothes?
If we treated our clothes, like our carpets, then we would look and smell like a dirty wino.
You see your carpet, is like clothing for your floors. It’s made of fibres just like your clothes.
What do you do when your clothes starts to smell? Sprinkle them with some deodorant powder? Spray them with perfume? I hope not! You would WASH them. Why wouldn’t you wash your carpet then?
Here’s the rub, you may not even notice the smell, because you’ve become accustom to it.
But your friends will. Noticed how they don’t want to come around anymore.
Eventually your carpet becomes statured with filth and it bonds to the carpet, acting like sandpaper on your once beautiful carpet.
It’s no surprise we see so many dirty carpets, you see they look clean on the surface. The visible grime you see is only a small amount of the accumulated dirt, because up to 85 per cent of the dirt in your carpet is buried deep within the pile.
Your carpet can absorb and trap its own weight in dirt
A square metre of carpets weights approximately 2.31 kilos to 2.64 Kilos
Which means an average room 9 metres by 6 metres is 54 square metres. So the carpet in this room would weigh between 124.85 kilos to 142.40 Kilograms. For the old school that’s a whopping 275.2 pounds to 313.9 pounds.
It’s estimated that within 6 months the accumulated dirt in your carpet, would weigh as much as your carpet.
So your carpets holding 124.85 kilos to 142.40 Kilograms of dirt, in a 6 x 9 metre room.
To put that in to perspective the equivalent to 83.2 to 94.9 boxes of laundry washing powder (1.5 kilo box) that’s lot of washing. It’s fair to say you most probably would not get through that much washing powder in year.
Just as your clothes need regular washing to keep them fresh and hygienic, your carpets require regular and steam cleaning.
Without proper cleaning, your carpet builds up a toxic sludge, which becomes a breeding ground for bacteria and other scary little creatures.
Once your carpets are stuffed full of dirt and oil, then it looses it capacity to trap the particles in the air. Now you’re breathing this muck in.
Not only is dirty carpets unhealthy, it’s also ruining your carpet. Most carpets are replaced because they ugly out before they wear out. The build up of soil in your carpet is corrosive by nature and eats away at the fibres of your carpet like sandpaper.
Your carpet gets a beating everyday, with children and pets running up down on it and dirty shoes grinding dirt in to your carpets. Most carpets get replaced prematurely because of inadequate care. Without proper care your carpet begins to look dirty and faded, as the dirt wears away your carpet fibres. Your high traffic areas will soon look limp or flat.
The longer you leave your carpets dirty, the quicker they’ll wear out. Dirt and grit are a carpet’s main criminals!
Don’t just wait until your carpet looks like a crime scene to get it cleaned
Don’t just clean your carpet for cosmetic reasons. It’s a crime to only clean your carpets when they look dirty. Your family’s health is important.
It’s the unseen soils, bacteria and allergens causing the real damage to your carpets and to your family’s health
Why not Clean your carpet simply for the health of it?
Soils, pollens, bacteria, fungus, cigarette smoke, car exhaust, asphalt, insecticides, urine, faecal matter and hundreds of other chemical pollutants are transferred to your carpet daily-especially if you have pets and children. You should want your carpet cleaned yesterday.
You should also use a professional carpet cleaner, to reduce the imbedded grime in your carpet. The high temperature of professional steam cleaning is particularly efficient at removing the high proportion of allergens and completely killing the dust mites living in your carpet. (Don’t let those health criminals overrun your carpet.)
Don’t wait for carpets to look dirty before taking action – it may be too late. Professional cleaning is the key to killing dust mites, which is the number one cause of allergens in the indoor environment.
Ask yourself this question. Do you want to clean your carpet so they just look good, or do you want to remove all the dirt, bacteria and fungus?
If you want your carpets to be completely clean and healthy, and you want to remove the bacteria, fungus, chemicals, pollens, tobacco products, then you need to get your carpet professionally steam cleaned.
If you can think of any thing which you may find in your carpet, then make sure you add them in the comments below
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