subject: How To Figure Out Which Is The Best Carpet Shampooer For Your Home [print this page] There are so many carpet shampooers out there, and they all promise to do a great job of cleaning your carpets. But which one is going to be the best one for you and your home? Sometimes there will be a feature that makes the difference.
Do You Have Pets?
Pets can make a difference in how often you need to clean your carpets and the kinds of messes you're going to be dealing with. They may be perfectly housetrained for years, then start having accidents on the carpet, for example. Not to mention the occasional vomiting you just wish would never happen.
Dogs and cats also shed. That means you're going to be pulling lots of fur and dander out of your carpets when you use your carpet shampooer. Some brands do better against pet hair than other brands.
Do You Have Kids? How Old?
Children are also terribly hard on carpets. When they're young, they spill all kinds of food on the carpet, even when you limit how often they eat on the carpet. Somehow food tends to make it out there anyhow.
Worse, it doesn't entirely stop as they get older. Even adults spill sometimes, after all.
Kids track mud and dirt in when they come back home from school or back inside after playing outdoors. It doesn't matter how often you tell them to wipe their feet - they will forget when their shoes are at their dirtiest somehow.
Then there are accidents during potty training and days the kids are sick enough to throw up all over your carpet. Some of these messes are pretty awful to deal with, but a good carpet shampooer can help you take away the reminders the stains provide as well as the smells.
What Kinds of Messes Do You Make?
We may be grown up, but we're not perfect. Just consider the kinds of messes you might be making on your carpet.
Do you like to eat in one of the carpeted areas of your home rather than the dining area? Is there carpet under your kitchen table anyhow?
Do you like to get your hands dirty? Some hobbies and jobs will have you hauling in plenty of dirt even when you're careful about dusting yourself off and wiping your feet.
Fight Those Stains
Most of us are going to need a carpet shampooer that does well against stains. That's a big part of why we're interested in them, after all. Some models keep the detergent separate from the water, so you can shoot extra detergent at those really difficult spots.
Other models rely more on scrubbing power.
If your messes are such that you're going to be using your carpet shampooer a lot, make sure it's easy to use. I would suggest one of the upright models. They do a lot of the scrubbing for you, and aren't that much more difficult than a vacuum cleaner.
