Green Recipe for Carpet Cleaning

There is no need to add chemicals and toxins to your home environment by using commercial carpet cleaning products. There are safe, nontoxic ingredients you probably already have that can be used to clean your carpet just as well or better than an expensive commercial formula.

Vinegar

Vinegar can be used for environmentally safe cleaning. To be truly green, use vinegar derived from a natural source in a carpet steam cleaner (see Resource 1). Use it full strength for really dirty carpets, but be sure to do a test on the carpet in an inconspicuous spot beforehand. Use hot water in the steam cleaner to remove the vinegar. For standard cleaning, use 1 cup white vinegar in 2 or 3 gallons of hot water. The vinegar mixture will do an excellent job to safely clean your carpets. In many cases, vinegar will clean a carpet better than commercial formulas. Vinegar also will remove odors from your carpet while it cleans.
A mixture of vinegar and water in a spray bottle can be used to remove small spots on your carpet in between steam cleaning.

Totally Green

Believe it or not, using very hot water with no additives in a steam cleaner will get your carpets very clean (see Reference 1). By eliminating any type of soap, your carpets will stay clean longer, too. Steam cleaning with a soap mixture leaves soap residue in carpet fibers, which attracts and holds dirt. Your carpet becomes dirtier faster after cleaning with a soap mixture.

Tip

When you vacuum your carpet in between steam cleanings, first sweep your carpet with a stiff broom. This will make the fibers of the carpet stand up and allow the vacuum to pull the dirt out from around and between the fibers. You will be amazed at how much more dirt is picked up by your vacuum when you do this first (see Resource 3).

References

• Homemade Carpet Steam Cleaning Recipes

Resources

• Is Vinegar Truly a Green Cleaning Product?
• Sierra Club Green Clean Recipes
• Natural Carpet Cleaners

[karlakaye]

on 9/8/2009 Kate has some great tips in this article! But NOT all commercial carpet cleaners are the same! Chem-Dry's cleaning solution, The Natural, is safe & non-toxic and green! The Natural uses only Plant based extracts along with the power of carbonation for a deep down clean that's also Green! (no soapy residues to re-attract the dirt)