There are many benefits to installing carpet in our homes and businesses. The most obvious one is that it beautifies our surroundings. Carpeting also reduces noise and vibration and keeps our feet warm in the winter.

But carpet serves another function—one that’s not as beneficial to the home or business owner. Carpet absorbs matter. It attracts and traps unwanted substances over time, whether these substances are visible or not. In other words, even though your carpet may not look stained or dirty, it can still hold pollutants as a result of normal use. These pollutants can include soils, fibers, and atmospheric dust, as well as allergens like pollen, fungi, mycotoxins, and mites. If you have pets, you can add pet hair and dander to the list, as well.

Fortunately, regular vacuuming is a highly effective way of removing most of these pollutants. (Bacteria and viruses can also hide in your carpet, but these are more difficult to extract with just vacuuming. See this post for more information.)

So, how often should you vacuum? Well, it depends upon a number of factors. The answer will vary, not only from home to home and office to office but even from room to room and season to season.

Once a week will suffice for a moderate-traffic room with no extra considerations such as pets, children, or high humidity. Light traffic rooms may need less, and high traffic rooms may need more. You can determine your carpet care maintenance needs by consulting the list below.

Some factors to keep in mind when deciding how often to vacuum are:

1. Frequency of use: is the room a high traffic area, like a family room, waiting room or hallway? These sorts of rooms will need more frequent vacuuming than low traffic areas like guest bedrooms and conference rooms.
2. Children: Do you have children living in your home, or does your business cater to a lot of children, like a daycare or an indoor entertainment facility? If so, you will want to vacuum more often, not just because children tend to be greater vectors for dust and debris, but also because they are more susceptible to illness than adults.
3. Sick and Elderly: Does your business serve the elderly and/or infirm? If you are operating a medical facility or a nursing home, you will want to vacuum more often as well in order to protect the health of your vulnerable patients.
4. Temperature, Humidity and Time of Year: Does the area get more traffic during the summer than the winter? Often, the carpet in homes will need more vacuuming in the warmer months because people spend more time outdoors and therefore bring in more dust and debris from outside. Humidity is also a factor: the moisture in the air can collect pollutants and then condense on the carpet.
5. Pets: Have cats and dogs? You should probably double the frequency of vacuuming in the rooms where they spend the most time.
6. Smoking, cooking and woodstoves: Smoke and ash can easily get trapped in your carpet, as can oils and other cooking residues.
7. What floor is the room on? Ground level floors tend to absorb more matter from outside than upstairs floors.

We hope you found this post helpful and informative! If you are looking for professional carpet cleaning in the Asheville area, give Five Step a call at 828.772.1824 or shoot us a message.