Carpet Cleaning

[dejagerw]

How often do you clean your carpet? Do you have your own machine, or do you have people do it for you? I'm kind of clueless when it comes to this. Also, when you clean your carpet do you move all your furniture out? Or do you just clean around the furniture?

Thanks!

[ASusan]

DH rents a cleaner from Lowes/Kroger once a year. We have a new house, so the carpets aren't that bad. We did not move the beds or dressers, but did move all the smaller furniture. We would probably move those larger pieces every 2-3 years.

He also does the dining room chairs (off-white upholstered, from our pre-baby days), and those come out great. He does the area rugs, too, and I have to help him because one person needs to stand on them (to keep them from moving around) while the other person uses the machine.

Before I was married, I hired a company to do the rug in my basement room (the rest of the house was hardwoods/tile). I liked them because they used ONLY super-hot water and sucked it almost dry. Those are the disadvantages of do-it-yourself - you can't get the water hot enough (usually) to sanitize, so you pretty much have to use a product, and the suction is never enough to almost dry the carpeting. YOu will have to wait for it to dry.

[Drummer's Wife]

We have this Bissell, and like it b/c it has a built-in heater.  DH uses it every few months (or more often if we have a spill, etc.)  and only uses water.  It works really well on our off-white carpets.