How Often Should You Steam Clean Your Carpets?

The question as to when you should steam clean carpets is dependent upon whether you need to address a specific issue or if the carpet is just in need of some maintenance. In both situations, you are taking important steps to ensure the life of your floor covering over time.

Many homeowners feel as if vacuuming is enough but it really isn’t, because even the strongest vacuum cleaner can’t get rid of all the bacteria and germs that are stuck inside of your carpet’s fibers at this very moment. But steam cleaning can eliminate what your vacuum will miss.

So when are the best times to have your carpets steam cleaned? Let’s take a look at the two instances in which you should definitely get a carpet cleaning bellevue.

Immediate Attention

Mistakes happen. It’s a fact of life. Unfortunately, most of those mistakes happen on your expensive carpet and steam cleaning is an ideal way to make sure you’re not reliving that spill or mess each time you walk by and glare at the ugly stain that was left behind.

It’s absolutely critical to clean up any spill, no matter what it might be, as quickly as you can. That way you’re not allowing the spilled substance to remain on the fibers so it can permeate them and leave behind a stain.

But absorbing and blotting isn’t always enough and steam cleaning can get into the carpet fibers and help lift the stain to avoid any permanent damage that could be left behind.

Pets and Children

Sometimes those hard to lift stains can be unavoidable, particularly if there are pets or children living in the home where a carpet has been installed. So while a soiled carpet may need to be steam cleaned after a bad mess, carpets that are exposed to the messes that are left behind by pets and kids might need more routine attention from a steam cleaner.

But how often that routine might be will depend on how many pets and/or kids you have living with you. One pet can leave behind dander, maybe the occasional bathroom mistake, and dirty paws that walk across your fibers every so often. In that case, having your carpet steam cleaned once a year is probably good enough.

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Homes with more pets and kids are probably exposed to two or three times the amount of mess as one pet or one child so having the carpet steam cleaned twice a year can really be effective for eliminating all of the major impacts that a soiled carpet can sustain.

A good steam clean can get out all of the dander, dead hair, and various mistakes and spills that can occur from repeated exposure to the damage that can be caused by those members of the family who aren’t acutely aware of how delicate those carpet fibers might be and the damage that can be done.

Routine Maintenance

Now maybe you haven’t made any serious messes on the carpet. No major spills, no pet accidents, no kids with their juice boxes, nothing big. Well, you still need to keep the carpet clean because every time you walk over it, you’re bringing some type of contaminant into the fibers.

If you, your family, even your guests are walking across the carpet with shoes, then you are most definitely making it dirtier with every step. If your walking around in socks and bare feet, you’re bringing less of a mess, but a mess nonetheless.

So consider how much foot traffic moves across your carpet on a daily or weekly basis. The more residents in the home, the more foot traffic on the carpet. If you have kids, that’s also an important distinction as they may not be as cautious about tracking dirt and mud into the house and your carpet.

If it’s only you and/or a significant other, then think about how careful the two of you might be about tracking in the outside world on the soles of your shoes. You may be soiling the carpet rather significantly on your own.

Once you consider these possibilities, then you can decide when it’s time to bring a professional cleaner to have the carpets steam cleaned. A standard home with one or two people can usually go about a year or two between steam cleanings. Homes with higher foot traffic may need it every 6 to 12 months.

But regardless of foot traffic, pets, kids, and all of the other dangers to a clean carpet, nothing beats what you see with your own two eyes. If the carpet looks dingy or dirty and it needs to be cleaned, then you now is the time.