Kids and Carpets: What You Should Know
Admin • May 11, 2020
Kids and carpets present a challenging combination. In addition to the stains, spills, and other damage children can wreak on carpeting, parents must concern themselves with the way dirt, dander, and allergens settle into carpet fibers, possibly jeopardizing their children's wellness.
The more you understand about the potential problems that kids and carpets create for each other, the more effectively you can keep those issues at bay through safe, healthy carpet cleaning strategies. Consider these essential points.
What Kids Can Do to Carpets
Kids do more than simply track dirt from outdoors onto carpets. Playtime often involves materials such as slime, crayons, paints, ink pens, and chalk, any of which can leave colorful, stiff stains on your carpeting. Babies may spit up or urinate, leaving carpets both stained and foul smelling. Nail polish spills can harden onto carpet fibers.
Many such stains respond well to spot cleaning, especially if homeowners address a wet stain before it can dry. Unfortunately, some substances may not come up completely despite the most careful applications of dishwashing liquid, nail polish remover, or other household solutions. Odors may also prove hard to tame.
What Dirty Carpets Can Do to Kids
For many parents, the concern over what a dirty carpet can do to their children's health outweighs the cosmetic annoyances of stains and spills. Allergens buried in carpet fibers can cause problems for children and adults alike. Common examples of these allergens include dust, dander, skin mites, insect parts, pollen, and mold.
A child exposed to carpet-based allergens may show symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, wheezing, a sore throat, a runny nose, shortness of breath, and watery eyes. If your kids regularly suffer from these issues at home, suspect the presence of carpet allergens.
Bacteria in carpeting poses another health risk for children, especially babies who spend much of their time crawling and breathing through their mouths at ground level. Traces of dog fecal matter or kitty litter can hide within the nap of a carpet, adding to the bacterial load. One square inch of carpet can hold 200,000 bacteria, according to Bob Vila.
While most bacterial strains don't cause illness in children, the ones that do can cause serious problems. Examples include staphylococcus, salmonella, and E. coli. Staphylococcus can create dangerous skin infections, while salmonella and E. coli often produce severe digestive upsets.
How Regular Carpet Cleaning Helps
While regular vacuuming can rid carpets of much of their surface dirt and allergens, it can't necessarily extract underlying particles entangled with the carpet fibers. Shag carpeting holds more hidden dirt than low-rise carpeting, but any kind of carpeting can trap stubborn particles. Wall-to-wall carpeting poses extra vacuuming challenges.
To eliminate both obvious stains and hidden threats, you should schedule professional carpet cleaning services according to your service technician's recommendations. Professional skills, tools, and cleansers can clean your carpeting down to its deepest level, eliminating odors, stains, and allergens.
Some parts of your home may require more frequent professional attention than others. For instance, children spend half of their home time
in their bedrooms, so you may need to have those rooms cleaned every few months, cleaning lower-traffic areas once a year.
Why Steam Cleaning Makes Sense
Steam cleaning may prove the most sensible solution for your carpet cleaning needs, especially if you have children who suffer from close proximity to bacteria. Water heated to over 200 degrees
Fahrenheit turns into steam that gets deep into the carpet fibers, killing germs, dust mites, and other irritants.
Parents concerned about their children's health also need carpet cleaning methods that don't call for toxic chemicals. Steam cleaning doesn't require such chemicals, thanks to its ability to sterilize carpets through heat. Steam cleaning also leaves less water in carpets than some other methods, reducing the risk of new mold or bacterial growth.
If you want your kids to enjoy the safest, healthiest home possible, All State Carpet & Tile Care can help. Contact us
to schedule effective, kid-safe professional carpet cleaning.
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