Disgusting carpets

[SantasHugandRollintheSnow]

This is my first thread in this section and I'm ashamed of what I'm going to ask and am pretty certain I'm asking the impossible

We moved into the house nearly 8 years ago and had light beige (what was I thinking?) carpet fitted upstairs only.

Over the years, one dog, a 4 year old, 6 month old, only one profession clean and not insisting people take their shoes off in the house it is grubby, stained and the pile is flatter than a pancake.

We are not in a position to replace it and won't be for a long time. Therefore I need to do something to clean it as best I can in the meantime.

I moved out very young and never got a good deep clean routine and I'm trying now to get it sorted. I don't want to pay for a professional as there isn't much they can do and a carpet cleaner doesn't work as the pile is too flat so it's going to be a hands and knees job.

What can I use to at least freshen it up and try and brighten it up a bit?

Ok - if you did decide on a professional carpet clean, I'd suggest using someone who uses the chemdry process rather than detergent. I think that if you get a detergent clean, some of the detergent stays in the carpet and dirt sticks to it more quickly!

Regarding a hands and knees approach. What is your carpet made of? Wool, synthetic, mix? What you can use really depends on this and what kind of backing is on it ( rubber coating or woven back?).

Hire a steam cleaner that will help to clean it. I used vanish carpet shampoo and steam cleaned a rug and it worked wonders.

Steam cleaners only work ime if the carpet is in good nick to start with.

We have just used as company who do a deep clean with water and a lovely deodoriser - it all gets pumped back into the van via a long tube. It was £100 for a big 2 bed flat. The difference is amazing - the carpets are like new now! Don't underestimate what a difference a professional clean will make and it brings the pile back up too.

Thanks everyone. valium maybe it is worth getting a professional in, I'm just not sure we can justify the cost with both Christmas coming up and our ds2 needing a helmet for his plagiocephaly as its so severe, had to pay a £500 deposit yesterday!

The carpet was cheap so I would say its synthetic. I've just looked at the backing in a corner and its white and kinda feels like felt. It's not the rough hessian backing nor is is foam.

I just hired a tuba clean machine from our local DIY shop. Cost me £16 to hire the machine for the day and £20 for a bottle of leaning fluid. It was quite scary how much it picked up from the carpet and sofa! It's a spray/vacuum machine where you spray on the cleaner and vacuum it up. I got it for the sofa but I did use it on our piece of carpet (mor like an over-sized rug) and its worked quite well. Certainly cheaper than a professional cleaner and I would imagine similar to what they would use.

Oooh! I will look for one to try first, at that price its not too bad.

If it is a synthetic carpet, I think your options for cleaning are wider than for wool. test all cleaning products on an out of sight part first, but it is possible it will take a lot of different sorts of products ( maybe even bleach?!). Use as little product as possible and as little water too, as if the felt backing gets really soggy it will get stinky be hard to dry out. If it were me I would try these in the following order on the worst stains:

ordinary bar soap ( use a damp cloth, rub lightly on soap, then on stain) rinse off with more damp cloth

washing powder- dilute in some warm water, use to damp cloth and apply and rinse as above.

If stains are still not shifting, you could try some stronger cleaning products and even some very dilute bleach but do do do test on unseen area first.

If you are going to follow this up with a machine clean (as below) then you don't need to be quite so careful about getting the carpet wet as the machine will suck up excess water.

Then I would do a clean with a hire machine as suggested by poison, only I would try it first with only half the amount of cleaning fluid recommended diluted down with water. If I had time and energy I would then repeat with just plain warm water in the machine ( and maybe a teaspoon of bicarb to soften it if you have hard water). My reason for doing this is that I think once you get cleaning fluids into carpet, they are very hard to get out completely and if you don't get them out they leave a slightly sticky residue that makes the carpets get dirty again more quickly!

Then install a large box/crate/basket near the bottom of the stairs and insist that all outdoor shoes are put in it before anyone goes upstairs!

Do report back and let us know how you get on.

Thank you for the suggestions. I am going to be scrubbing an area each day next week while ds1 is in school and ds2 naps. I will then hire a cleaner to go over it again. Is it worth (when clean) scotch guarding it?

RE scotch guard - it depends, I think, how old the carpet is and when you might want to renew it and how clean you can get it.. If you are sticking with this carpet for a number more years and it comes up very clean and scotchguard is within your budget,then do it! If there are still stains or dirt that you might want to continue to get out at a later date then don't scotchguard it as you don't want to seal the dirt in!

Ok, I'll see what it looks like. We won't replace the carpets until ds2 is potty trained at least and he's only 6 months old so if they get clean enough ill think about doing it.