Vibrating the back of a rug with a specially modified vacuum cleaner.
As much as we all take care when visiting friends and family for the holidays, accidents still happen. One moment you’re holding a canapé in one hand and a glass of wine in the other (red of course), and the next moment both are tumbling down for a final landing on your cherished rug. When well-intentioned customers try to spot clean spills like wine at home, their best efforts may result in making stains harder for professional removal later. In this informative post, Sara Tiger, Manager for Job Youshaei Rug Company, outlines three tips to handling spills and stains on your investment.
Yes, accidents happen, and at Job Youshaei Rug Company we expertly address and handle stains of all kinds in our facility. Meanwhile, we receive many calls asking how to clean certain stains at home. Generally we provide conservative replies – the reason for our hesitation is not necessarily to preserve cleaning “secrets.” Rather, it’s because one product or method alone does not necessarily result in what the customer wants: a sparkling clean rug. And, as professional rug cleaners, we rarely, if ever, spot clean alone…spot cleaning is part of the overall cleaning process in order to get an appearance that is as uniformly clean as possible.
1) Know Your Rug
Fibers and most stain removal products that are sold at the hardware or grocery store are not wool-safe. For example, oxygenated bleaching products may be helpful when cleaning artificial fiber rugs, but “Oxy-anything” can damage the color of wool. Wool-safe products that are made to be used by professional rug cleaners are more abundant.
2) Treat the Spill Pronto
If you spill red wine on a rug, the best thing to do is to blot up the wine with a light colored cloth or towel (nothing that could transfer dye to the rug) and then pour (not sprinkle) table salt onto the remaining wine, using enough salt to cover it completely. The salt should leech up some of the wine. Leave the salt on the rug for a few hours, vacuum it up, and then call us to pick up your rug.
3) Ultimately Treat the Whole Rug (here’s why and here’s how the professionals do it)
A good professional rug cleaner removes the rug from the house, because a very thorough cleaning can only take place when the rug is able to be moved around and is in an environment where enough water can be used for washing and rinsing. At Job Youshaei Rug Company, we work on the rug from the back and from the front, which cannot be accomplished in the home.
Here is the basic dust and wash process that is performed at our facility:
- Vibrate the back of the rug. Dry dirt and soil that have settled into the foundation of the rug will fall out, where they can be vacuumed away. (This dusting process takes time – sometimes hours for just one rug.)
- Wash the face of rug with appropriate soap or shampoo and fresh water. Scrub with a medium-stiff brush using proper technique. (Correct brush technique protects fibers.)
- Rinse the rug with lots of cool water.
- Treat spots and stains that may remain after washing. (Sometimes pre-treating is done before washing.)
- Either rinse or wash and rinse again.
- Air dry. (Sometimes after drying, we opt to wash again, if we think improvement can be made.)
- Touch up fringe to assure uniformity of color and then dry fringe quickly. (Cotton fringe can oxidize during drying, if drying is slow – this results in an orangey color, especially at the tips of the fringe.)
If the rug has pet accidents on it, part of the washing process involves treatment with an enzymatic cleaner and special vinegar. The rug may be floated in a shallow pool, so the urine flows from the rug into the pool.
BEFORE
AFTER (the rug was cleaned and the fringe was replaced)
… A story + testimonial:
I recently had a customer who was considering hiring a well-known steam cleaning company to work on his rug in the house, ask me if it would be worth the extra cost to have Job Youshaei Rug Company pick up his rug and clean it. Although I believed it would be far better to use us, I didn’t want to oversell our services: this customer’s rug was heavily soiled with discolorations, gray areas, and dog urine stains. Compounding my concerns, the rug is a light-colored, artificial silk shag that isn’t easy to clean well. So, I let my customer know that I was fairly confident that our results would be worth it to him, but, of course, I was a little worried, too, because I didn’t want to disappoint his expectation for our services relative to his investment.
After cleaning and delivering his rug, the customer called me and said: “Company X doesn’t have anything on you.” I told him, “Thank you, I thought your rug looked pretty good myself. I felt it had a good sheen to it.” My customer’s enthusiastic reply: “The rug has never looked like this!” (Meaning that it looked better after our cleaning than it had ever looked.) I was so pleased to hear that, and it reinforced our well-earned opinion that what we do and how we do it is the right way.
The holidays are here and hosting is in full-swing. Call or visit the showroom of Job Youshaei Rug Company today and tell us about your stain or current rug needs! Remember to mention Libertyville Area Moms for a 10% discount, up to $500 off.
2540 Skokie Valley Rd, Highland Park 60035
Located just south of Route 22 on the West side of 41
847-432-8100
Store hours: Tues-Sat 10am-7pm, Sun 12pm-5pm