When you offer a professional carpet cleaning and stain removal service, you get to see some pretty bad carpets… by which I mean formerly good carpets that have got into a very bad state (we see some carpet jobs that are in questionable taste as well, but that’s another story for another day). Blood, urine, paint, ink, poop… we see it all in our beloved London. In most cases, we’re able to restore the carpets to their former glory so that you’d never know that the mess had been there; in the rare cases when we don’t, we’re able to help with the insurance process (ask us about this).
However, there’s one carpet cleaning job that every professional carpet cleaner hates dealing with: vomit on the rug. We will clean it up – no doubt about that – but we’ll confess to getting that sinking feeling when we hear from a client who needs this sort of work done.
Part of this reaction comes from a basic, primal instinct. Wincing and staying well away from vomit is a survival mechanism designed to keep us away from something that will potentially make us ill. Most of us feel nausea when dealing with vomit is our bodies telling us, “Smell that? See that? Stay right away!” However, this reaction can be overcome, and you can harden off to it. Nurses, vets and doctors do it, just like London carpet cleaners have to. Bear in mind London is full of clubs where heavy drinking takes place on weekends (and weekdays too).
Why Puke Is Such A Problem
You may think it’s abundantly and nauseatingly obvious why vomit on the carpets is a big problem. It smells and looks revolting, after all! However, it’s not quite like other disgusting substances that get on carpets, such as dog poop or pee. The big problem is that what’s in vomit varies, affecting how the carpet absorbs or doesn’t absorb it. What’s more, the combination of warmth and strong acids from the stomach makes woollen fibres more prone to staining. Depending on what’s been eaten – or drunk, which we see frequently – there can be quite a lot of liquid and substances prone to staining carpets. Different substances need different methods for removing the stains from the rugs and carpets, which makes it tricky. Let’s just say that a curry to finish up a night of wild drinking in London’s finest pubs and clubs isn’t the best for your carpets.
The problem is often made worse by how the problem isn’t usually dealt with straight away. People who are actually sick are usually pretty good about getting vomit where it can be dealt with easily, whether it’s the loo or a handy bucket – with the exception of small children who sometimes can’t read their bodies’ warning signs until too late. However, those who have had way too much to drink aren’t quite so… discreet about it. This means that the problem isn’t dealt with until they’ve sobered up and probably had a few aspirins, etc. This gives the substances that the body has evicted time to set into the carpet fibres, which increases the likelihood of staining. Red wine and curry that has sat overnight? That’s a devilish duo from the perspective of stain removal! All of London’s carpet cleaning technicians will instantly confirm what I mean
How Not To Remove Vomit From Carpets
If you are lucky (?) enough to be able to deal with vomit as soon as it’s got onto the carpet, then you may be able to remove most, if not all, of it yourself, at least once you’ve comforted that sick child and tucked him or her up in bed with a comforting book, lemonade and a hot water bottle. However, there are some ways that one should never try using to remove vomit from carpets. They may seem like useful hacks – but they’re definitely not!
The first common trap that people could fall into is trying to vacuum up the mess with a wet and dry vacuum – or a plain ordinary vacuum cleaner in the case of more solid stuff or stuff that’s had time to dry. Sure, this will remove a lot of the mess from the carpet, but it will then get all over the inside of your vacuum cleaner, including the hose, the brush, the filters and the dust compartment. It is very tricky to clean all of these thoroughly enough, so the end result is that you will fill your house with the smell of puke every time you vacuum afterwards. The same principle applies to other revolting organic substances that get on the carpets.
The other trap is to use hot water to try to remove the vomit stain. Instinctively, you may feel that hot water will clean more efficiently and will help kill bacteria. However, this is a bad mistake. If the vomit contains proteins, which is quite likely, the heat will set the stain into the woollen carpet fibres. Even if the technicolour yodel doesn’t contain protein by some miracle, the combination of heat and acid will permanently help the wool take up the colour. (On a more cheerful note, it’s possible to dye wool at home for craft use with hot water, vinegar and food colouring, and the results are colourfast.)
The Right Way To Remove Vomit From Carpets
Cleaning vomit from carpets is not a pleasant job by any means. However, grit your teeth, fight back that nausea, don your rubber gloves and get on with the job. Good for you if you have caught the worst of it straight away. The job will be a lot easier. You may still need to call in a professional to get rid of residues, but the more you can do yourself as soon as possible, the simpler it will be, and the time that you spend smelling the disgusting stuff will be much shorter. You have full permission to run off and throw up in the loo if you need to – no shame in that if you’re not used to it.
The first step is to remove as much as you can. As mentioned above, don’t use the vacuum cleaner for this. Scrape up as much as you can with something rigid, such as a dustpan (but not the brush). Dispose of this, preferably down the loo.
The next step is to irrigate the area so that the carpet fibres take up plain water and the puke particles can be flooded out. This requires a lot of care to ensure that the stain doesn’t spread further – you need the right amount of water, but not too much. Use cold water – it will not set protein stains.
Once you have added the water, you can start the process of blotting up. This is best done with an old towel – it will need thorough washing and disinfecting later. Blot up as much as possible and keep going until the carpets are slightly damp.
After this, you can spray some disinfectant over the spot to kill bacteria. However, they will die if the bacteria have nothing to feed on and no moisture.
To remove any grease particles and to remove the smell from the carpet, which is very important, sprinkle baking soda over the area and brush these gently through the carpet fibres. It’s best to do this when the carpet is mostly dry. Leave the baking soda to absorb the smell, then sweep it up and throw it away – you can just get away with using the vacuum cleaner for this, but I don’t recommend it.
Some traces may still be left in the carpet fibres. In this case, you will probably want to call in a London-based professional stain treatment service to tidy up the remainder. In fact, you can call in a stain removal expert at any stage, but the more that you can remove yourself, the more effectively the professional will be able to remove the stain.