Carpet Cleaning Solutions and Chemicals- How Do They Stand Up Against Pure Water?
If you look on any store shelf in the home improvement department, you will see tons of carpet cleaning solutions and chemicals for nearly every conceivable purpose. These products will promise you the sun and the moon if you use them, but look at the ingredients (if they are even listed) and you will see some pretty toxic and caustic stuff on there. You have to ask yourself if putting such harsh chemicals on your carpet is worth it, especially when residue from those chemicals is inevitably left behind and any child or pet who plays on the carpet could end up covered in the stuff. Plus, with water being such a good solvent, do you really need to clean your carpets with chemicals at all?
The decision of whether or not to use carpet cleaning solutions and chemicals as opposed to pure water is similar to the decision of whether or not to dry clean your clothes. A lot of people have no problem with it, while others are just plain uncomfortable with the idea of wearing clothes that have been treated with chemicals. Some people simply wash dry clean only clothes by hand and then hang them up to dry. It works just as well as dry cleaning, with no chemical residue. You can do the same thing with area rugs and small mats, but for wall to wall carpeting, the decision takes a little more thought. You can’t wash this kind of carpeting by hand, so do you use chemicals on it, or a steam cleaner?
A steam cleaner is considered superior to chemicals by many people, including lots of professional carpet cleaners. This is because, unlike chemicals, steam is mostly intangible and as such, can get to every single carpet fiber, and penetrate all the way down to the bottom of the carpet backing. It can get to some very old, very embedded dirt this way, making your carpets cleaner than they have ever been before, and it accomplishes this using nothing but hot water in the form of steam. It is a totally natural and organic way to clean your carpets. Carpet cleaning solutions and chemicals, for the most part, just can’t penetrate a carpet as deeply as steam.
While sometimes certain chemicals may have to be used on hard to remove or old stains, this is really just spot treatment, and the professional carpet cleaner can easily clean the rest of the carpet using steam alone. The minimal use of carpet cleaning solutions and chemicals to remove stains in small areas is much preferable to using it to cover the entire house with toxic substances. If you decide to clean your carpet yourself or go with a professional carpet cleaner, steam should be your cleaning substance of choice.
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