The Importance Of Removing Carpet Stains As Soon As Possible
For most of us, the initial reaction when something happens to stain a carpet, like knocking over a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine, is to do something about it quite quickly. But few of us realize just how important it is to act just as soon as we can.
While the stain is still wet, by far the best way to deal with it and probably have most success, is by straightforward blotting with a clean white cloth. Most of the liquid will be drawn off the surface of the carpet fibers and into the cloth. Any solids will need to be carefully scraped up.
Blotting and scraping will only work, however, when the stain is still wet. If the wine, coffee, or whatever has dried it will not simply soak into the clean cloth. And if the spill involves solids as well, which have dried and hardened they can be very difficult to remove from the carpet fibers. It will be like trying to remove glue that has stuck to the carpet.
Apart from the problem of trying to remove dried stains, the longer any staining solution is in contact with the carpet, the greater chance that it will chemically react with the fibers. Depending on the material used to make the carpet, which could be any number of natural or synthetic yarns, and the chemistry of the stain, some marks could be very difficult to remove as an irreversible reaction may have taken place.
Additionally, some carpet materials are absorbent so the liquid stain will eventually soak deep into the fiber and be very difficult to draw out again.
To avoid the problems with dried stains, the risk of chemical reaction and the challenges caused by absorbent carpet fibers, it really is best to tackle carpet stains as quickly as possible.