5 ways to freshen up your carpet in your home

Carpet can be hard to keep clean especially with pets and small kids running around. As you may know, kids will always spill their drink as soon as you told them to use two hands to drink with. Pets will have accidents when excited or when teaching the puppy how to go outside. Some of these tips are the ones your mother or grandmother likely passed down. Feel free to share some of your cleaning tips with us!

1. Use Baking Soda – Baking soda absorbs odors like no other cleaning product. Sprinkle a good amount of baking soda on the carpet and let it sit for 10 minutes. How much? You will need around one box of baking soda per 10 by 10 feet room. Vacuum the room or area after the 10 minutes is up. Your carpet will be extra fresh and looking clean.
2. Grease stains – Grease may be the worst kind of carpet stain because it is so difficult to remove. We’ve got a secret weapon, though, that’ll get it right out of the fibers: flour. Sprinkle the stain with finely sifted flour, then lay a piece of brown paper (from a clean paper lunch bag or shopping bag, for example) over the stain and stack phone books, bricks, or other heavy weights on the paper. Wait about half an hour. Remove the weight and the paper, and then use a clean whisk broom to sweep the flour out of the carpet. Repeat the process as many times as necessary to soak up all the grease, using fresh flour and paper each time. Vacuum the area after to get up any excess flour.
3. Spot cleaning with shaving cream – Your carpet probably needs a spot-clean in numerous places. An easy way to get rid of carpet stains is using shaving cream. Spray the stain with some foam shaving cream (not the gel kind) and let it sit for 30 minutes. Blot it with a clean cloth after waiting. This solution works on a wide range of stain types, including grease. Make sure to do a test patch in an inconspicuous area of your carpet to ensure it won’t cause any discoloration before. 
4. Steam Cleaning – You can hire a pro to do this or you can rent a machine from your local grocery store. It can be intimidating, but the hardest part is loading and unloading the cleaner from your vehicle. The machine extracts the solution along with the dirt and debris in the carpet. The water will penetrate the fiber all the way down to the backing and loosen any embedded soil, remove oil and grease deposits, and get your carpet cleaner than it has ever been. It is recommended to deep clean every six months for a family of four.
5. Cleaning carpeted stairs – The best way to shampoo carpet on stairs is by hand with a scrubbing brush, but this is also the most time consuming and labor-intensive method. The first step to cleaning carpeted stairs is to remove any stubborn dirt and debris that is deep in the carpet and won’t come off with regular vacuuming. A good way to achieve this is by using a brush with stiff bristles. Start at the top of the staircase and work your way down. Once you have worked on a step and loosened any dirt, use the brush to sweep the dirt down the stairs. This will make it easier to keep all the debris together and avoid trampling it back into the carpet. Vacuum each stair individually after and let dry before using the stairs.