Seven steps to steam-cleaning your carpet

If you feel like you’ve been paying way too much to have your carpet professionally steam-cleaned, you could most likely cut out a lot of the cost by doing it yourself. Here are the six steps you need to take when you rent a steam cleaner:

1) Empty the room

Unless you want your carpet to be multi-tinted, you will want to move everything from the room you’re cleaning into an adjacent room. While this is a pain, it will give you more room to operate and the entire carpet will be clean.

2) Vacuum carpet well

Take a normal vacuum cleaner and go over the areas that you plan on steam-cleaning. This will help get up any of the extra dirt so you’re not burdening the steam cleaner with extras that it shouldn’t have to pick up.

3) Pre-Treat

Pre-Treat heavily soiled areas with Carpet Spot & Stain remover or Traffic lane cleaner.

4) Plan your route

You will always want to start your cleaning where there isn’t an exit and work your way towards one. Don’t trap yourself in and don’t do any weird patterns in your carpet. When you’re all done be sure that you let your carpet dry before moving all the furniture back on.  

 
5) Fill machine with hot water and carpet cleaner.

6) Make sure you overlap at least 4" to 5" to avoid striping. 7) You will want to shampoo the carpets length-wise and then width-wise.

7) After carpet dries, vacuum again for any residual flakes and or carpet fuzz.