Carpet spotting – Have you ever-spilt coffee or juice on the carpet and did not know how to clean it? There are a few things to consider. The key is to clean the spot immediately, or before the liquid has time to react with the carpet and soak into the padding. Check to see if the carpet has padding under it or if it is glued down to the floor directly. If it has padding, and you spilt a lot of liquid, it probably soaked down into the pad. This can create reoccurring problem. The key is to preferably use a white rag and blot the rag on the stain, pressing hard with your fist or shoe, turning the rag using a  new clean area often. After you have blotted up as much as you can, get some warm water (most of the time you do not need a carpet spotting solution) and another clean rag and get the stained area wet. Repeat the blotting process with white rags. Visit our store for White terry-cloth rags which will include a spray bottle of all purpose cleaner sample.

If the carpet is glued down, the process will be the same but it will take less time and will give up the stain easier.

Things to consider: The reason stains come back 1-2 or weeks later is because you were not able to remove all the liquid from the padding. It is the same principal as the way oil travels up an old style candlewick. The carpet fibers pick up the moisture in the padding and "wick up " the stain to the surface. So in this case, do not blame your carpet cleaner! The padding is the culprit, not the carpet. You can do a quick fix and with a slightly damp rag, rub the spot in a circular motion, turning the rag over frequently, trying not to get the padding wet. In extreme cases, the carpet padding is cut out in that area to prevent the stain from reoccurring.

Important, when working on a carpet spot, work close to the spot to prevent the stain from spreading and looking worse. When you are done, you might notice a difference in the spotted area to the rest of the carpet. Let it dry completely.

One of three things have occurred:

• You cleaned the spot so well that the rest of the carpet shows how soiled it is.
• You did not get all the spot up.
• Your carpet will not "give up" the spot. Usually this is true with older carpets. Especially "Berber". Different carpets will react differently. Contact your local carpet cleaner on further action to be taken. Call us to remove the spot.

       Window cleaning and recycling - Paper towels or rags, which do I use? Most rags tend to leave pieces of material on the window when you are done and you will use lots of them in the process, then you need to clean them for reuse (and they don’t clean up well). Almost everyone has newspaper around. Using newspaper is a great way to clean the windows and it saves our trees. Also, you are doing your part to recycle paper and save some trees before their time. Here is what you do – Spray a small area of the window you want clean, pull out one or two sheets of the black and white parts of the newspaper and crumple it into a sponge type size. Wipe the glass in a circular motion, turning  the paper over when you see it does not dry the glass well. You will be amazed how well it cleans! Wow! Why didn’t I think of that?