Well, You Love You Carpet, Right?

Alright mate? ‘Ow are ya, geezer?

I am John. I have been cleaning carpets in London town for more than 20 years. Trust me, I’ve cleaned a lot of grimy fibre but have never managed to shrink or ruin a client’s carpet.

OK, I’m sure just a few moments’ thought can produce quite a few ways to ruin the soft fluffy stuff that covers your floors and keeps your feet warm on a chilly foggy London morning. Some of you, I’m sure, could get quite creative with, say, blowtorches and fluorescent paint. You could probably have some sort of competition for deliberate carpet-wrecking, with points awarded for flamboyance and rapidity of destruction.

Don’t Follow The Carpet Anti-Care Advice Below and You’ll Be Fine

Just to make sure you understand what this article is about, I will re-phrase it. I am trying to bring to your attention the fact that not caring for your carpet can make your wallet suffer. From my long years’ experience as a London carpet cleaning technician, I have seen a lot of damaged carpets, rugs and upholstery. In most of those cases silly accidents dominate the top 10 causes.

Any muggins can ruin a carpet on purpose. However, a lot of us could be ruining our carpets accidentally. This is what this article will tell you how to go about accidentally damaging your carpet so that it becomes threadbare, smelly, grimy, tatty and full of bacteria without you having to try very hard. Seriously, it’s easier than you think!

1. Install your carpet in the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom, kitchen and other wet areas are great places to spoil a carpet. The water in these areas that inevitably gets on the carpet will soon soak into the fibres right down to the natural jute backing, which has a sponge-like ability to soak up water and hang onto it. Add in a bit of warmth and the dust that settles on any carpet anywhere and you will soon be able to breed a lovely crop of mildew and mould, making your carpets smelly and hideous. To really speed the process of turning a nice carpet into a germ-laden patch of stinky ick, then install one of those mats around the toilet bowl.
   
2. Keep your shoes on. If you want a way to ensure that plenty of grass stains, grit, mud and (if you’re up for an extra challenge) doggy doo gets over the carpets all through the house, then leave your shoes on when you come in from the outside, especially if you’ve been out for a run on a rainy day or if you’ve been doing a spot of gardening.
   
3. Ditch the vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaners do a reasonably efficient job of removing the surface dirt and sometimes even some deep-down dirt from the carpet. Even a low-quality one will pick up quite a lot of dirt, especially if it’s done regularly. However, to ensure that your carpet can collect a nice little zoo of critters, including fleas and dust mites, as well as a delicate patina of fluff and hair, then consign your vacuum cleaner to the depths of the cleaning cupboard or get rid of it altogether.
   
4. Don’t even think about professional carpet cleaning. If somebody has sabotaged your attempts to slowly ruin the carpet by vacuuming it, then don’t despair. Even a very good vacuum cleaner can’t remove all your attempts to keep the carpet dirty. Mud and wet mess that’s tracked in on shoes will still stay in the carpet fibres. So will anything smelly. What’s more, the vacuum cleaner can’t reach down all the way to the deeper parts of the carpet. There will still be a few bits of grit and dust lingering deep down inside the carpet. This will give you a bit of an edge when it comes to wearing out your carpet quite quickly – literally. Think of sandpaper or nail files. All those little bits of grit that have worked their way in can do the same job on your carpets, and they’ll keep on doing it every time that you walk on the carpet. The only way that these deeply embedded particles will stop doing their job is if you arrange for someone to do a spot of deep cleaning to get them out.
   
5. Get the carpet wet. Notice what I said earlier about jute backing and how water stays in it very easily, making a very happy home for all kinds of indoor wildlife? The same can happen in any room in the house if somebody spills water on the carpet or if the sink overflows and floods down the hallway or if a leak makes its way through the ceiling. To ensure that this water damages your carpets, don’t bother blotting up as much as you can with towels as soon as possible and don’t even think about calling in a professional to deal with the water damage and discolouration that often occurs. Of course, your task of ruining the carpet is made even easier if the liquid that has got itself onto the fibres is brightly coloured like cordial, hard to remove like red wine or smelly like pet urine.
   
6. Do craft activities directly on the carpet. There are all sorts of craft activities that you can do on the floor if you need lots of space. If you want to kill your carpets then never put newspaper or some form of drop sheet down first. Even if you do your crafting on top of a table, then you might be able to get some form of splatter or spill down onto the carpet, so forget about putting down a drop sheet under the table for really messy activities. The craft activities that are great for wrecking carpets include painting (especially when children do it with brightly coloured poster paints or sharpies), scrapbooking (all that glue and glitter!) and even giving yourself a bit of TLC in the form of painting your toenails. Nail polish doesn’t come off carpets easily at all, so if you want a carpet with some interesting colours as part of the damage, give yourself regular pedicures involving several coats of polish with your bare feet directly on the carpet.
   
7. Leave spills on the carpet for as long as possible. Even spills that can come out easily if you get onto them quickly can set into the carpet if they are ignored and left for a while. Others require a bit of help to set, such as blood and egg yolk, which will bond nicely to the carpet fibres if you apply a bit of heat, such as hot water. Some common everyday items that can be particularly difficult to remove are red wine and curry, so go ahead and sit on the floor or stand around on the carpet with that very generous bowl of turmeric-laden lamb curry and a nice glass of pinot noir filled to the brim. You definitely shouldn’t call a professional spot cleaning specialist to remove those vivid spills you manage to make.
   
8. Never groom your pets. Pets like cats and dogs do a very good job of shedding hairs all over your carpets every time they moult. To ensure that the maximum amount of moulted hair gets on your carpets and ruins them nice and quickly as well as giving them a distinctly doggy aroma (cats don’t smell quite as bad unless they have bladder problems – sorry about that), then don’t bother grooming them. Never wash your dog when it’s rolled in something disgusting and definitely don’t groom them outside if you want lots of mess on your carpets that even a good vacuum cleaner can’t remove. Your attempts to spoil the carpet can be thwarted by regular applications of the vacuum cleaner, especially ones that have been specially designed for pet hair, and thorough professional deep cleaning.
   
9. Put houseplants directly on the carpet. When you want to bring a bit of nature indoors, you can speed up the demise of your carpet by putting the pots that your houseplants are growing indirectly onto the carpet rather than onto a stand or windowsill. Terracotta pots are best for spoiling carpets, as they breathe and allow water through them quickly as well as leaving nice reddish splot on the carpet, but even a plastic pot with one of those water dishes in can do a good job. Water will overflow, plants will shed sap and leaves and if you’re really lucky, they’ll send out roots and dirt down the bottom (especially if you don’t bother with a water dish).

All the best with your efforts to spoil your carpet. If, however, you want to keep your carpets in good condition, then you now know what not to do.