Where Not To Put a Carpet – Think About The Cleaning

Carpets are lovely fluffy things that add warmth and softness and even quiet to our homes – when they’re nice and clean, that is. However, even though carpet is a splendid and lovely thing in most rooms, as long as it’s the right colour (but that’s another story!), there are some places where you definitely shouldn’t have a carpet down. Maybe I should qualify that statement: there are some places where the carpet shouldn’t go if you want it to stay looking nice.

Cleaning Your Carpet is Affected by Where It’s Placed

The unfortunate truth about carpets is that they collect dirt. This isn’t just because dust and dirt are trapped easily by carpet fibres as they swirl through our lives (meaning the dust and dirt; carpets can’t usually be described as swirling). It’s not just because children, dogs, and even adults who should know better march over them with mud on their shoes and feet. It’s also because carpets are on the floors rather than on the walls (unless they’re prized Persian carpets hung on the wall as décor), and when anything gets spilt, tipped, sprayed or dropped, it goes down, thanks to gravity, where the carpet is waiting.

What’s more, although vacuum cleaners are fantastic inventions and regular vacuuming does wonders for any carpet, there’s only so much they can do. They can’t remove the dirt trapped deep inside a carpet. They can’t remove liquids that have dried on, and they can’t remove bacteria. Steam cleaning, especially when carried out by a professional Chelsea carpet cleaner, can, of course. If a carpet gets wet, it also provides a very snug environment for bacteria and mould, which you don’t want in your home because it’s as bad for you as it is for the carpet. This means that if your carpet is in the wrong sort of place where it gets wet a lot or extremely dirty, it will either turn into a nightmare or a professional carpet care person like me is going to be a very, very regular visitor to your house.

Unfortunately, not everybody seems to have twigged to this idea yet. In the course of both my professional and my personal life, I’ve come across some decidedly manky carpets, classic examples of where not to put a carpet.

Don’t Place Mini Carpets by the Toilet

I sympathise with the idea of not getting cold feet when you get up first thing in the morning (or in the middle of the night); I really do. Certainly, carpets in the rest of the house do this job beautifully. However, those little mats that sit around the base of the loo are literally a step too far. We all know what goes on in the toilet. Even the most accurate marksman (and I mean man in this case if you know what I mean) doesn’t always manage to get it all in the right place. Small children sometimes open the floodgates far too early. People pull mean and creative pranks involving clingfilm. Women between the ages of about 13 and 50 know that leakages happen on certain days of the month. Other people, especially drunk, can be inaccurate when throwing up in the toilet. Even in the case of perfect accuracy, there’s a fine spray that rises into the air when the button is flushed, and not all of that aerosol spray makes it back down into the toilet bowl.

In short, those mini carpets very quickly become the most unhygienic items imaginable. If you really can’t stand cold feet when you go for a pee first thing on a chilly morning, at least use slippers or thick bedsocks, which are easier to wash and don’t get a regular dollop of namelessness on them.

Don’t Place it in the Kitchen

We all know that the kitchen is the heart of the home, so it seems like such a cosy idea to put carpets on the floor. Besides, cutting down on the echoes would save a few frazzled nerves when one tries to cook when hungry and headachy. And what about cushioning those glasses that slip out of your hand when you’re unloading the dishwasher? Nevertheless, carpets and kitchens really don’t mix – or maybe that should read that they mix only too well. Ask my mother, who had carpet in her kitchen in one of the homes she rented once.

Kitchens are where we prepare food, wash dishes, make coffee and sometimes feed the cat. I don’t think I go through a single day without getting something on the kitchen floor, even if it’s just a few drops of water that were once steam that condensed on the lid of the saucepan boiling my pasta. Most of us have had some kitchen catastrophe involving food and other liquids going everywhere – and if you haven’t, you will. There was a time the lid wasn’t on the blender properly when someone made a banana smoothie. There was the curry and the attempt at making jam that boiled over. There was the jar of beetroot that didn’t have the lid on quite properly that took a nosedive between the countertop and the fridge. There’s always toast that falls on the floor, butter side down. There’s the overenthusiastic coffee maker that splutters when it’s working. These create enough of a mess when there’s a sensible hard floor, but they’re an absolute nightmare to clean on the carpet.

Things are even worse when it comes to life’s inevitable broken wine glasses. On a hard floor, one can see where all the sharp shards are and sweep or vacuum them up easily. A carpet gives those wickedly sharp bits of glass a place to hide in wait for unsuspecting feet and fingers. Jagged edges catch on the carpet fibres and refuse to go up the vacuum. Nine times out of ten, it’s in the kitchen that wine glasses and the like break, rather than over carpets, and not just because carpets are softer surfaces for them to fall on.

Don’t Place it in the Garage

Car enthusiasts and DIY mechanics spend a lot of time standing up, working on something, or lying on their backs doing something underneath the car. It makes sense that you’d want to cushion that hard concrete floor a bit. Carpet seems ideal for this, but garages are even messier than kitchens when it comes to things getting spilt and dropped on them – and paint, engine oil and wood varnish are a lot harder to remove from carpets than, say, beetroot juice and curry. However, these are pretty beastly as well. Honestly, having carpet down in a garage will be a losing battle if you expect to keep said carpet clean.

In fact, it’s probably wisest to consider any carpet in the garage as a write-off that will look manky, filthy, grimy and generally disgusting. Have one, by all means, but don’t expect it to be very pretty, any more than you’d expect your overalls to look pretty. If the carpet you lie on while getting busy with a socket set under the car starts to grow mould, however, it’s high time that you chucked it out (don’t bother trying to salvage it unless you want to spend several fortunes on getting the carpets cleaned) for your health.

Suppose your landlord has put a carpet down somewhere in the garage. In that case, your best bet is to roll it up and store it in a corner because there is no way under the sun that you will be able to maintain it in good condition if you want to actually, you know, use the garage to park your car in or keep your bikes and tools in.