Everyone has some ancient relative who swears by their unique way of cleaning things around the house like commercial cleaners.
One such method you might have heard of is using baking soda to clean a carpet.
This might seem like absolute insanity to anyone who’s never tried it but there is actually some method to the madness.
Baking soda has some interesting properties that make it a useful tool for cleaning things like pots and pans with burnt-on food stuck to them so it should be able to help with cleaning other things, right?
Here’s How You Can Use Baking Soda To Clean Your Carpet?
- Start by vacuum-cleaning the area you’re trying to clean first. This will remove all the dust and lose pieces of dirt that could get in the way later on.
- Use some kitchen towel or a cloth to dab the affected area if some kind of liquid or greasy substance has been spilled on your carpet. You want to have a dry area to work with for your baking soda to work best.
- Pour some baking soda onto the stain on your carpet. You need to make sure you use enough baking soda to cover the affected area but not so much that you end up creating a bigger mess with it!
- Next, you’ll need to work the baking soda into the fibers of the carpet. You can do this with a dry brush or cloth but make sure you don’t press too hard and end up doing damage to your carpet.
- If you have a non-greasy stain, you could spray a small amount of hot water onto the baking soda to help it settle in and make the affected area slightly damp. However, this isn’t a good idea if you’ve spilled something greasy onto your carpet.
- Then, you’ll simply have to leave the baking soda overnight (or for a good several hours) so that it can work its magic.
- In the morning or after it’s been left for a few hours, use your vacuum cleaner to suck up all the baking soda from your carpet and it should be left nice and clean!
- If the stain is still there after you’ve vacuumed the baking soda, feel free to repeat this process as many times as necessary. If it still hasn’t worked after 2 or 3 tries, you might need to go for a more industrial method.
There you have it, it really is that simple to use baking soda as a cleaning agent for your carpet. You might feel like you’re going a little bit crazy as you pour white powder all over your floor but you’ll just have to trust the process and get behind the idea that plenty of people have done this before and it worked for them!
Can You Use Baking Soda To Clean Your Whole Carpet?
The method that we outlined above is intended for use in a small area where a stain has formed on your carpet. However, you can also use baking soda on your entire carpet and it’s particularly useful for removing unwanted odors from the room.
Essentially, you’ll use the same process as outlined above, but cover the entire carpet in baking soda. Don’t worry too much about every square inch being covered at first, you can always make sure everything gets treated when your work it into the carpet with a brush or cloth.
It’s also probably a good idea to leave the baking soda overnight for this method or just make sure nobody needs to be in the room while you’re leaving it to work its magic.
If you have a particularly tough odor to get rid of, leave the baking soda for longer and it should do the trick of making the room smell much fresher.
How Does Baking Soda Clean Things?
Scientifically, there are a couple of good reasons why you should use baking soda to clean a lot of things around your house.
It is a basic chemical, meaning it falls on the higher end of the pH scale. Don’t worry if you don’t remember all of this from chemistry lessons in school, the important thing to note is that baking soda is an alkaline substance.
This means it can dissolve organic substances like dirt, grease, and food. Effectively, it can loosen all the dirt that clings to something like a carpet and make it so much easier to clean up.
The other property that makes baking soda so useful for cleaning carpets is its mineral structure. It’s a very fine powder that works as a light abrasive substance and will not scratch or damage any household items you clean with it.
This is a particularly useful property when cleaning pots and pans that have a non-stick surface that you don’t want to scratch off.
Can You Use Vinegar To Clean A Carpet?
Vinegar is known for being another surprisingly useful cleaning agent. However, it should NEVER be used to clean stains on a carpet.
Vinegar is an acidic substance, falling on the lower end of the pH scale. This means it will be great for breaking down the kinds of minerals that form easily in hard tap water. This makes vinegar a useful substance for cleaning up water spots and stains on sinks.
However, vinegar doesn’t work against organic compounds like grease and food, so will be no help in removing these kinds of stains from your carpet.
Not to mention, pouring vinegar onto your carpet will only end up creating a bigger stain than you started with, which will be even harder to clean up!
Final Thoughts
If you didn’t already know, baking soda is a fantastic cleaning agent and can be used for all kinds of carpet cleaning jobs, not just your carpet.
If you didn’t already have some in your kitchen cupboards, it’s not a bad idea to get some on your next grocery trip.
Even if you don’t use it for baking, you never know when it might come in handy!
