The Best Way For Pet Owners to Protect Carpets from Messy Pets

We’re finally getting consistently good weather for going outside. For pet owners, this can be a huge relief, because your pets can finally get some exercise after being cooped up all winter. On the other hand, spring means a lot of dust, mud, and allergens, all of which your pets can bring into your home. This can play havoc on your carpets. How exactly do you deal with that? Well, here are some tips for pet owners to consider.

5 Tips For Keeping Carpets Clean

1. Get Pet Friendly Carpets

If you’re in a position to choose what kind of carpets to get, you should keep your pets in mind. Some carpets are better for pets than others. Uproot Clean has a good article on what to look for in a pet friendly carpet, but I’ll summarize the basic points.

A pet friendly carpet should be durable, because animals play rough. It should be stain resistant, because pets are going to make messes. It should be easy to clean for the same reason. And it should be comfortable for your pets to walk on. You can check out their article for a list of carpet types and how well they meet these standards.

2. Keep Paws In Mind

Your pets’ paws will be the biggest culprit for bringing dirt and mud into your home and this is what will do the most damage to the carpet overall. You should clean your pets’ paws regularly. You can also use special rugs and mats that help scrape the dirt off their paws when they enter. If you want to really keep things clean, you can get fiber protectors for high traffic areas of your home and lint rollers to clean shed fur off of furniture.

3. Regular Cleaning

Despite your best efforts, your pets will still bring dirt into your home. There’s no avoiding it, so you’ll have to have a schedule for regular cleaning. Vacuuming once a week (maybe twice a week) will help get rid of the excess. Don’t forget to clean your pet, too! Regular grooming will make sure you remove a lot of the excess fur they’d otherwise shed before it gets into your carpet. It will also help get out the dirt and grime in their fur, so that they don’t spread it as much wherever they go.

4. Clean Messes Right Away

It isn’t just dirt on your pet’s paws you should watch out for. They will also make other messes, such as spilling drinks, food, and paper training accidents. When these things happen, you want to clean them up right away.

When it comes to paper training accidents, there are some things you should keep in mind. You will need to use the right cleaners to prevent these accidents from becoming regular. You want enzymatic removers that will dissolve the particles of urine and feces that leave trace scents that could encourage your pet to make that spot a regular toilet. You should also avoid stomping paper towels or rags when cleaning, as all this will do is push the mess deeper into the carpet where it’s harder to clean up. Instead, consider a carpet extractor type of vacuum to suck it up after you’ve removed the obvious waste and sprayed it with cleaner.

Bonus Tip: rinse the spot treatment with more clean, warm water than normally recommended and carefully blot it up using a towel. Otherwise, the remaining cleaner the remaining treatment in the carpet may be prone to more stains and might gather more dirt.

5. Professional Carpet Cleaning

Regular vacuuming will help keep your carpets clean, but it’s not enough to really do the job. If you want your carpets to last, then you need to have a professional carpeting cleaning job done. Professional carpet cleaners will have equipment that gets deeper into the carpet and removes more of the dirt and grime responsible for wearing out your carpets.

Usually, it’s good to have your carpets cleaned at least twice a year – once in the spring after winter and once in the fall just before – but for pet owners, you may want to consider more than that. It depends on a lot of factors, such as the size of your pets, how many you have, and how much traffic they give your carpet overall. In either case, we definitely don’t recommend less than twice a year as a minimum if you really want your carpet to last.

We Can Help

Easy Breezy Pros has professional carpet cleaners to help you out. Right now is the best time to get on that. Spring has finally come, so the warming weather can make it faster to dry the carpets out after cleaning. Since you’ve been inside more often over winter, there’s probably a lot more dirt and grime in the carpets that you need to have cleaned out. It should definitely be part of your spring cleaning checklist.

If you haven’t had it done already, then consider giving us a call. We can definitely help you out!

Featured image by Cottonbro Studios