Is Your Office Under a Carpet Stain Alert?

Keeping carpets clean is the hardest thing to achieve when dealing with office cleaning. If don't believe it, just ask your commercial cleaning company.

Every carpet needs regular cleaning to keep bacteria, dust, and dirt under control. These are guilty for the deterioration of carpets and can really shorten their use. However, the worse problem commercial cleaning staff encounters is stains. These really make the carpet look ugly and convey an unprofessional image.

Here we present several tips to help you keep your carpets clean when an emergency occurs and the professionals are not around:

1. Coffee stains

This is probably the most common type of stain that you will find in office carpets. When dealing with a coffee spill, soak up the excess with a towel, clean with soda water, dry with a cloth, and repeat until the stain disappears.

2. Wine stains

We've all been there. You're having a sweet glass of red wine to celebrate a colleague's birthday or an office achievement when suddenly, tragedy strikes! Red wine is spilled over the white carpet. Luckily, this is a very easy problem to solve: just pour some white wine or soda water over the fresh red wine spill. If you spill white wine instead, spray with soda water.

3. Beer stains

These are not very common in the office, but if you happen to spill some, you should soak up the liquid with a paper towel and clean with warm water or soda water.

4. Chewing gum

This is a true nightmare! If you don't get it right, you will lose your carpet. We recommend putting ice in a bag and rubbing it on the gum so that it solidifies, and then scrape as much as possible with a blunt knife. After this is done, use carpet shampoo to clean the spot, wait until it dries, and finally vacuum it.

5. Ink stains

These are also very common in the office. The treatment will depend on the type of ink:

- Ballpoint ink stains have to be dried up ASAP. Wipe with menthylated spirits or apply a stain remover.

- Fountain pen ink stains have to be diluted with soda water and washed out as much as you can. Make a hot mixture of soap flakes, leave it on the stain for fifteen minutes, and clean. Repeat this procedure until the stain is gone.

6. Grease, oil, fat, and candle stains

Put blotting or brown paper on the stain, put a cloth over the paper and iron the spot at medium heat so that the grease adheres to the paper. Later, apply carpet shampoo. If the stain shows up again after a few weeks, it means the grease was sucked inside the carpet, and you will have to look for professional treatment to clean it.

7. Tar stains

These also give cleaning staff the biggest headache. If you don't remove them right, you will have to simply change the carpet. Start by scraping the excess tar off, combine equal parts of glycerin and water, apply and leave for one hour; finally rinse with water. Do this until the stain is no longer visible.

Yep! Stains can cause you physical pain! You and your personnel should be extra careful when handling beverages or materials that could cause serious stains. Prevention is the best practice; however, accidents happen. Stay calm, follow the instructions above, and call your office cleaning service immediately for professional support.

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Autor: Virginia Stamford

Commercial cleaning services - http://www.maintenance-one.com/ - office cleaning.

Added: January 19, 2010
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/