Carpet plays an important role in making your home look neat and clean. This is one reason why regular carpet cleaning is recommended (and necessary). Moreover, you need to be careful with materials and substances that can stain your carpet. Even after taking utmost care, you might still end up spilling a liquid or dropping a substance on your beautiful carpet and hence causing a stain; and even a small stain can really destroy the look of your carpet and make it look unclean. So, stains need to be attended to and cleaned as quickly as possible. Here are some tips on cleaning carpet stains:

1. Act immediately:

1a. As soon as you spill a liquid or drop a liquid substance that can cause a stain, blot the area with a white paper towel. This will prevent the stain from spreading and will make cleaning easier for you. This kind of simple blotting is used generally for coffee, tea and juice stains. For stains that are caused by some non-liquid or semi-liquid substances, you might need to dampen the cloth before using it for blotting. For oily or greasy substances a suitable solvent is used for dampening the cloth before using it for blotting the stain. In fact, you should plan for such contingencies and have such solvents available in your home at all times.

1b. For solid substances like cakes etc, the first step is to carefully scrape off the solid substance as much as you can. Be careful to not spread it around or else cleaning the stain will become a really tough job for you.

Immediate blotting or scraping is one of the most important parts of the procedure for cleaning carpet stains. You should continue dabbing the stain with a white paper or cloth towel until you remove all excess.

2. The second step for cleaning carpet stains: After the initial blotting or scraping, the excess liquid/solid is removed and you are left with the actual stain to deal with. Depending on the type of stain, you would use carbonated water (e.g. club soda) or detergent solution or vinegar or household ammonia or other specific stain removers for further blotting out the stain. However, plain water is used for cleaning carpet stains of all kinds. Irrespective of the cleaning agent you use, you would be using a dabbing motion for cleaning stains (no rubbing or scrubbing). Hydrogen peroxide solution is useful for cleaning carpet stains caused by spilled coffee/ tea and juices.

3. Patience: You need to exhibit patience at each and every step of the procedure for cleaning carpet stains. Keep blotting the stain till it is completely gone. It could be a bit tiring or frustrating, but that is the only way to get rid of these stains (and remember, if you lose patience you might end up spreading the stain or making it worse).

4. Never rub or scrub: This is the golden rule for cleaning carpet stains. When you see a stain, blot it; never rub or scrub it. Rubbing a stain will only make the stain grow bigger and cleaning the stain will get even more difficult.

5. Special stain removing agents: If you find that the stain is not going away with the simple household measures you need to get special stain removing agents for cleaning carpet stains of that particular type (caused by that particular substance).

About the author:

Chris Daniel is the webmaster and publisher of CarpetCleaningHints.com where you can get more information on Cleaning Carpet Stains and find some great Carpet Cleaning Tips.