10 Reasons To Clean Your Carpet Regularly

By Chuck RobertsSubmitted Content
11:12AM / Friday, March 21, 2014Print Story | Email Story

Previously, I wrote about why it's a great time to clean during cold-weather months. This time I want to inform you of 10 great reasons why you should clean your carpets (or rugs) on a regular basis.

Extend the wear life: Carpet and fiber manufacturers recommend carpets should be cleaned every 12 to 18 months. This helps remove damaging soils, keeps the appearance looking like new, and helps extend the wear life, maximizing your investment in your floor covering.

Indoor air quality: Carpets act like filters, trapping airborne pollutants. Dust, dander, pollen, pet hair, soils, etc. all contribute to our breathing unhealthy air. These pollutants must be removed to improve your indoor air quality, breathing, and helps protect the carpet and your investment.

Easy to maintain: Cleaning carpets before the spots and stains occur is much easier than afterwards. Most carpet soiling is from dry soils brought into the home. Regular vacuuming will remove approximately 70 percent of dry soils.

Spots and stains: Spots and stains often attract more soiling. This usually happens when homeowners use easy to purchase retail products. Unfortunately, many fail to read the small print and fail to test the product first. Usually this leads to either color loss or the product was not thoroughly rinsed leaving a slight, sticky residue which traps new soils, leading to rapid re-soiling.

Prevent buildup of allergens: If anyone in your family has breathing or allergy problems, a regular cleaning of your carpets can help remove many of the allergens or bacteria that has been hiding in your carpet (don't forget your furniture either!)

Improve appearance: Clean, well-maintained, like-new carpet makes a homeowner feel good about having guests in their home as well as the overall cleanliness of their home or facility.

Morale: Family members, guests, visitors, workers, staff, etc., all feel better about their environment when it's clean. This includes having clean, great-looking carpets, rugs, orientals, furniture.

Family fun: Having clean carpets and rugs invites your children, grandchildren, and others to have fun on the carpet, without having to worry about smelly, dirty, spots, stains, and soils showing.

Dust mites: Yuck! A thorough cleaning of your carpets and other furnishings will help remove dust mites and bedbugs which may have found a home in your home or facility.

Maintaining your carpet warranty: If you don't remember, you may want to review your carpet warranty. Most manufacturers require cleaning be conducted every 12-18 months, or within a specific time frame.

Chuck Roberts is owner of Roberts Carpet & Upholstery Care, an authorized Von Schrader Associate specializing in low-moisture cleaning. For more information, contact him at 413-458-9399 or robertscf@aol.com.

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Lee Wants Bioremediation in Housatonic River Vernal Pool Study

05:24AM / Thursday, September 03, 2026

LEE, Mass. — The town has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric to include PCB bioremediation in its vernal pool study on the Housatonic River.

Lee officials are urging the EPA to require GE to add a bioremediation treatment arm to the vernal-pool study or provide the public with a clear explanation for why such testing is being excluded.

"This is exactly the kind of question EPA and GE should be asking before final remedy decisions are locked in," Select Board Chair Bob Jones said in a statement released to the press. "The town is not asking to slow the cleanup. We are asking EPA and GE to make the cleanup smarter, less destructive, and more protective over the long term."

An open house was held in Pittsfield earlier this summer for the Vernal Pool Pilot Study on Reach 5A of the Housatonic River, a five-mile stretch between the river's confluence and Lenox border.

EPA has required GE to conduct a Vernal Pool Pilot Study as part of the Housatonic River Rest of River remediation, comparing excavation and restoration with activated-carbon-based treatments, including a product called SediMite and powdered activated carbon, the town said.

Ten vernal pools will be cleaned of polychlorinated biphenyls in total, five with excavation and five with active carbon, and seven additional vernal pools will be monitored as controls. Construction will be complete around October, but the pools will be left to their natural processes and monitored with surveys and sampling for three years.

The Lee PCB Advisory Committee wrote a letter calling for the 21st-century approach it said could reduce long-term toxicity, avoid unnecessary destruction of sensitive habitats, and improve the effectiveness of the cleanup.

It states that Lee supports the study's purpose and agrees that EPA and GE must understand how cleanup activities affect sensitive vernal-pool ecosystems.

"The current pilot includes 10 treatment pools and seven control pools, while local officials understand that roughly 100 vernal pools may occur in the broader remediation corridor," the Aug. 27 letter reads.

"That makes the pilot study consequential: the methods tested now could shape how many sensitive wetlands are excavated, reconstructed, treated, or left with PCBs managed in place."

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