Although no rule says you must deep clean your home during spring, spring cleaning developed a following among homeowners centuries ago. When you search for spring carpet cleaning specials, you’re participating in an act of spring cleaning that dates back to the year 3000 BC. This cross-culture phenomenon developed in various locations as part of the natural agricultural cycle and as a part of world religions.
The earliest deep cleaning practices come from the Iranian Festival of Norouz (pronounced Nowruz), Jewish preparations for Passover, Catholic altar preparations on Maundy Thursday, and the cleaning of the home on the Chinese holiday of Ninyabaat.
In northern Europe and the Americas, the climate precluded cleaning the home from top to bottom until spring. When spring began, homeowners could open windows and doors to allow fresh air into their abodes without admitting insects. Spring’s warmth meant they no longer needed a constant fire in the fireplace, allowing them to clean the soot off of the walls and clean the fireplace and chimney.
Our cleaning methods have changed during the past few thousand years, but wanting a clean house has not changed. Besides hiring a chimney sweep and pest control service, look for spring carpet cleaning specials that can save you money and time by offering more than just carpet cleaning. Let’s consider how to find the best deals and the highest-quality home service providers.
Look for Local Deals
Check your local newspaper for spring carpet cleaning specials first. Local home care businesses typically take out advertisements that include either a clippable coupon or a special offer that requires no coupon. Other places to check for such ads include local and regional free magazines and the Yellow Pages. Look under carpet cleaners for business listings and display ads.
Some local carpet cleaning businesses may come to you by conducting door-to-door visits. Other home service companies might hand out flyers at the shopping mall or shopping center.
Look for local deals on carpet cleaning online, too. Conduct two searches using each major search engine – Google and Bing. Search from your desktop computer and search from your mobile phone. The search engines provide different results depending on the type of device you use, so you can uncover deals doing a mobile search that the desktop search did not and vice versa.
Of course, you shouldn’t trust your home and your carpets to the lowest-priced company. Check out each company’s history, credentials, customer reviews, and more.
Look for Experience
The carpet cleaner companies you consider should offer much more than spring carpet cleaning specials. Any company you consider hiring should offer years of experience, too.
Check each business’ history on the Better Business Bureau (BBB) site. Most businesses that provide a physical service, such as cleaning or construction, maintain a BBB profile. This government bureau investigates consumer claims of fraud and malfeasance. It also lets verified customers of the business leave reviews.
Check other review sites, such as Google Business and Angi, for reviews and information. Beware of Google Business reviews and ratings though, because Google does not verify that a rater or reviewer has actually done business with the company.
Phone your local municipal offices to inquire about the company’s business license. Most cities and towns require companies operating in the construction or trades industries to acquire a business license. Depending on the services provided by the company, it may also require certification. The municipal office that handles business licenses may have a list of the required certifications.
Find a Company That Can Clean Furniture, Too
While searching out spring carpet cleaning specials, prioritize those companies that offer multiple services, such as furniture cleaning and restoration. Finding such companies can help you maintain your home office furniture and any antiques you own.
Besides cleaning and restoring furniture, also look for home care businesses that clean drapes and curtains. These services pair well with carpet cleaning and many businesses offer both services.
Pair It With Hardwood
Some spring carpet cleaning specials may require the customer to purchase two services, such as hardwood floor polishing. Perhaps your hardwood flooring looks a bit worse for the wear and you’ve meant to address it. Your spring cleaning could provide the ideal opportunity to clean the carpets and hire wood floor contractors.
The best companies for wood floor contracting offer a range of services that go far beyond floor polishing. Typical services offered include:
- Hardwood floor refinishing
- Hardwood floor repair
- Hardwood floor replacement
- Hardwood floor installation.
Some hardwood flooring service providers may also clean other types of flooring, such as concrete or ceramic tile.
Use Other Flooring Types Throughout the Home
Consider a home services company that cleans carpets and does cleaning, polishing, and repairs on other types of floors a real find. If you discover such a business while searching for spring carpet cleaning specials, consider it your lucky day, especially if they offer the services of a concrete floor polisher. Many homeowners choose concrete flooring in modern designs so they can have custom designs combed into the wet cement. This provides their home with unique flooring like no other.
Typically, companies that polish concrete floors and lay them also offer garage floor coating applications. Spring cleaning offers the ideal time to not only clean but make small repairs and home improvements. If you haven’t recoated your garage floor in a while or you’ve never had it coated, ask if you could earn a discount on your total service bill for ordering more than one service.
A garage floor coating does much more than improve the appearance of your garage floor. It makes the floor tougher and easier to clean. The coatings used on these floors resist water and stains, so you make future cleaning easier on yourself by having the cement coated. This cost-effective home improvement offers one more benefit – added safety. These coatings create a slip-resistant surface which can reduce slip-and-fall accidents.
Consider Ceramic Accents
Don’t ignore your home’s ceramic floor tiles while perusing spring carpet cleaning specials. Ceramic tiles need special cleaning, too. While you’re doing the spring cleaning, take care of the ceramic tiles, too, by having them professionally cleaned. This cleaning process usually includes grout cleaning. The term grout refers to the solid colored substance between the tiles that hardens like clay and maintains the space between the tiles. It holds them in place.
Bathroom tiles typically use thin lines of grout, but kitchen and living areas often have much larger flooring tiles and thicker grout lines. Grout comes in a variety of colors, but white and cream grout tends to prevail in bathrooms and kitchens, especially for backsplashes. Lighter-colored grout shows dirt easily.
The ceramic tile flooring may only need polishing, but at least once per year, preferably every six months, you should clean the grout or hire someone to do so. Grout sometimes wears out – small pieces break off, or it disintegrates. When this happens, have the room re-grouted. Grout cleaning or resurfacing can make a floor look new.
Find an Affordable Service
While you can find many flooring contractor options through spring carpet cleaning specials, you won’t find them all affordable. Once you’ve checked the license for each potential business, its certifications, and you know what services each provides, it’s time to obtain quotes.
Because you need to be able to compare apples to apples, get a quote from each business for only the carpet cleaning. From each company that offers more than carpet cleaning, you also obtain a quote for all of the services it provides that you need.
For example, one company might offer carpet cleaning and hardwood floor refinishing, but another might offer both of those services and cement coatings. That means you would obtain a quote for just two services from one, but three services from the other. By subtracting the cost of the third service, you can still create an accurate comparison.
In many cases, home service companies do provide a discount on multiple services. This can sweeten the deal for you since you will knock out many necessary home improvements all at once using just one provider.
Don’t negate the convenience of using a sole source for home improvements. Your search may begin with carpet cleaning, but when you unearth a local contractor with certifications in multiple areas of expertise, you make home improvements easier for yourself. Rather than dealing with multiple people, you have one person. A general contractor who handles everything streamlines the process. It makes scheduling simpler, too.
Once you find an experienced, knowledgeable home services contractor, if you do need services that they don’t provide, you can ask them for a recommendation. They’ve probably had to hire a sub-contractor for that job before and may have a standing agreement with a company. Once you find a business that you trust, ask them who they use for a service that they don’t provide, results in you hiring who they trust.
Other Spring Cleaning Service Needs
During the process of spring cleaning, you may find areas of your home that require more than cleaning – they need repairs. A full-service home services contractor can also repair holes in walls, patching drywall, or plastering the area.
Once you wash your walls, it reveals whether the paint needs refreshing. These contractor services often offer interior painting, too. Sometimes, a room only needs the trim touched up or a new coat of paint to make it look new.
Your home may contain rooms that lack molding or trim. A contractor can add these items, refreshing the appearance of those rooms.
Most cities and towns have at least one full-service contractor, but if you only need the carpets cleaned, you might consider renting a carpet shampoo machine and doing it yourself.
Do It Yourself Carpeting Cleaning
Individuals experienced in deep cleaning homes or who really enjoy the rewarding feeling of cleaning their home may choose to clean the carpets themselves. Springtime also means spring carpet cleaning specials on shampoo machine rentals and purchases. If your home’s carpets require frequent shampooing, purchasing a carpet shampoo machine could offer the more economical option.
When you do it yourself, you’ll also need to purchase carpet cleansers and spot treatment cleansers. Pre-treat any set-in stains, such as pet urine. Only use cleansers developed specifically for carpet cleaning. Other types of cleansers can remove the dyes from the carpet, leaving you with a bleached area.
Because you’ll remain at home while the carpet dries, make a plan of the room order you will use that lets you work backward so you finish in a room that opens into a room with a different type of flooring. You should not walk on a wet carpet, so you’ll need a room that connects to a bathroom to spend the night in.
Consider dividing the spring cleaning of carpets into two days if you reside in a two-story home. Do the upstairs on day one, so you can sleep downstairs while the second-floor carpets dry. Also, shampoo carpeted stairs on day one. They’ll dry while you sleep on the first floor.
Plan day two’s carpet cleaning so you end up at the foot of the stairs. That lets you go up the clean and dry steps to the dry second floor to sleep while your first-floor carpets dry.
Waiting for Carpets to Dry
Carpets typically require between six and 12 hours to dry. Walking on a wet carpet damages the carpet, causing it to flatten or mat. It also pushes dirt from your feet or shoes into the carpet fibers. This makes it tougher to remove that dirt, even with a powerful vacuum cleaner.
For safety’s sake, you also avoid walking on wet carpets. Their slippery nature can cause you to slip and fall. If you’re cleaning carpets that got wet from a burst pipe, they could contain mold or mildew spores.
Finally, don’t move your furniture back into place until the carpet dries. Furnishings can damage wet carpets just like walking on them.
Spring
Cleaning and Carpets
Nearly every city and town has home service companies offering spring carpet cleaning specials, making it easier to find someone experienced to refresh your carpets. Before hiring a carpet cleaner, check their license, certifications, and read reviews of their work. Obtain quotes from a few providers to nab the best deal. Clean carpets can freshen the smell and look of your entire home, so put this item at the top of your spring cleaning list.