Thankfully, you don’t have to get rid of your carpets or your pets in order to have clean, beautiful floors. Here are some essential carpet care tips for those who want the best of both worlds — pets AND spotless carpeting.
Related Article: Best Pet-Friendly Carpets
How To Keep Your Dog or Cat From Ruining Your Carpets
1. Bathe Your Dog or Cat Often
While you may find the occasional viral video of some fluffy pet enjoying every moment of their bath time, most pets are not nearly so docile when it comes to a good scrubbing. However, regularly bathing your cat or dog can do a lot for your home and carpets. Our pets walk on, lay on, and roll all over our carpets, so keeping your pet clean is part of keeping your carpets clean. It can also prevent your home from absorbing animal odors. When you keep your pets regularly bathed, you prevent their natural odors from building up into that all too familiar ‘dog-smell’. Additionally, pets that aren’t regularly groomed can quickly develop thick mats of fur, which ticks, fleas, and other insects can easily hide in. Keep your pets clean and it will be easier to keep your carpets clean.2. Vacuum Pet Hair Regularly
A thin film of dog or cat hair on your carpets will make them look dull and dirty. Walking on your carpets when they have this layer of hair actually grinds the dust and debris into the carpet fibers, making it harder to clean. Naturally, consistent vacuuming will help enormously. But what about when someone is on their way over for dinner and you don’t have the time to haul out the vacuum? There are other tricks available for just removing pet hair.
When it comes to cleaning your carpets or area rugs, a fast and simple way to collect pet hair is to use a window squeegee. Yes, a window squeegee. This multi-purpose tool can be dragged along the surface of your carpets and rugs and to collect a majority of the pet hair. Simple trick to tidy up quick!
3. Roller Your Furniture
Vacuuming your sofas, chairs, and ottomans can be tedious and time consuming, but the last thing you want is for your guests to sit in a pile of hair from your pet’s fluffy mane. But never fear, there are fast and simple solutions to this problem too! For pets that shed very little on your sofas or chairs, you can use a store-bought lint roller to solve this hairy problem. Homeowners with pets that shed more aggressively have been forced to get creative. Using a paint roller brush, wrap a layer of duct tape around the brush, sticky side facing out. Then use this hand-crafted and very sticky lint roller to collect and discard the massive amounts of pet hair left on your furniture. For hard to reach places, wrap a sponge or cloth in duct tape and go to work!4. Quickly Remove Pet Stains
Whether you’re dealing with recent spots that are still moist or rough carpet stains that are several months old, remember that slow and steady wins the race. While it may take several iterations of wash, rinse, and repeat, these stains should lift from your carpets.
How to Remove Pet Stains:
- If the spot is recent, use dry paper towels to clean up any loose mess.
- Use dry paper towels to sponge up as much of the mess as possible before using a cleaner.
- Mix 2 cups of distilled white vinegar with two cups of lukewarm water.
- Gradually add 4 tbs.of baking soda. Be aware that it will fizz, so do this slowly.
- Pour the solution into a spray bottle and spray the spot or stain. Let sit for 5 minutes.
- Blot the stain with a clean rag from the outside in.
- With a clean, wet rag, rinse the spot with the same blotting motion.
- Repeat the cleaning process as necessary until stain is no longer visible.
5. Protect Your Carpets From Cats
Cats love to scratch things. A cat’s claws can do quite a number on your carpets and area rugs. There are a number of solutions that cat owners have found to address this problem:a. Purchase Floor Coverings and Furniture Guards
There are a number of products that can be purchased from pet stores and online retailers that will help prevent damage from cat scratching. Plastic mats can be put around door frames, plastic covering can be stretched across area rugs, and furniture can be sprayed with deterrents to prevent your cats from clawing your sofa or chairs.
b. Purchase Cat Towers and Scratching Posts
Cats use scratching as a way to file their claws, so the action is natural for them. Be sure that they have a place in your home where this is safe to do. Cat towers and scratching posts can introduced as a safe and acceptable way for your cats and kittens to file down their claws.c. Trim Your Cat’s Nails
Trimming your cat’s nails may not be easy, but it’s certainly worth it. Without their needle-pointed claws, it is harder for them to pull apart and damage the fibers of your carpet. Schedule in regular times to clip your cat’s claws and you will be doing yourself, and your floors, a favor.
