How to clean carpets

First, vaccuum the area to be shampooed really well. If your sweeper takes bags, put a new bag in. The more dirt you get out now, the less you will have to deal with later. Sweep one direction and then come back and sweep the other direction. Remove as much furniture from the room as you can! It will make your project easier!

Read the instructions on the shampoo machine and the shampoo. These both will give you some very good information, especially about how much to use! Do not think that more shampoo is better; you'll be making a mess that will be hard to clean up!

If you have stains or extremely dirty spots, treat those with a solution of the shampoo (mixed according to directions) that you have placed in a clean spray bottle. Give them a pretty good soaking down; the shampoo machine will suck up the liquid just don't take a bucket full and dump!

Then pick a starting place and have a go at it! I prefer to start in the corner of the room furthest from the door and work my way towards the door. Keep a dry cloth handy to wipe down the furniture that you get solution on that you were unable to move. The cleaning solution can mark wood finishes! Work in sections applying shampoo and sucking it back out as I go. Get as much solution out as you can! Overly wet carpets will mold and mildew and add to your problems. Let the machine do the work. You can see how much solution you're sucking up with the machine; don't move on to the next section until (1) it's clean and (2) almost no solution is coming back into the recovery tank.

When you're done, turn a fan on the carpets to help them dry and try to keep everyone out of the room at least overnight or until the carpets are dry. Then the next day (when the carpets are fully dry) sweep them again really well! This gets some of the remaining dirt out that was brought to the surface and helps re-fluff the carpet.

I will warn you that when you see how much dirt comes out of your carpets you will want to rip them all out! And that is exactly what we're in the process of doing! Carpets are bad for anyone with allergies because they hold so much yuck!