After more than 55 years in the carpet-cleaning business, I’ve learned that there are some things you simply don’t forget.
Most of the time, when you finish cleaning a carpet, you walk away feeling pretty good about the job. The carpet looks clean, the spots are gone, everything is drying properly, and you know you’ve done what you came there to do.
But every once in a while, something happens that makes you stop in your tracks and think:
“Oh my! What did I just do?”
I’ve had that experience more than once over the years. Here are two of the more memorable ones.
Oh My! The Blue Carpet That Turned Green
This is something you don’t run into very often, but when you do, it can be more than a little frightening.
You have just cleaned a section of blue carpet. Everything looks fine. You stop for a few minutes to get something, and when you come back, you discover that the carpet you just cleaned appears to have changed from blue to green.
Your first thought is not, “I wonder if that’s an indicator dye.”
Your first thought is:
“Oh my! Did I just ruin this carpet?”
Fortunately, the answer can be no.
Some carpet dyes are what are known as indicator dyes. Their apparent color can change when the pH around the dye changes. During carpet cleaning, we introduce cleaning solutions that can have a different pH than the carpet originally had.
That change in pH can temporarily change the color of the dye.
So a blue carpet can suddenly appear green.
The important thing is that the dye hasn’t necessarily been destroyed or permanently changed. As the carpet returns toward its original pH, the color can return to what it was originally.
The first time you encounter something like this, however, knowing that doesn’t necessarily make the experience any less alarming.
You walk away from a blue carpet and come back to a green one.
Oh my!
Experience teaches you that sometimes what looks like a disaster is actually a temporary chemical reaction.
And that brings me to another “Oh My!” moment from very early in my career.
Oh My! The Carpet That Turned Into Waves
This happened about 55 years ago, when I was just getting started in the business and still had a lot to learn.
I had cleaned the carpets in a real estate office on a Saturday afternoon after the office had closed for the day. It had been raining practically all day, so the air outside was extremely humid.
I steam-cleaned the carpets inside the office, which, of course, added even more moisture to an already very humid environment.
When I finished, the carpets looked great.
I moved the furniture as necessary, locked up the office and went home, feeling pretty good about the job.
I returned on Sunday because I wanted to put everything back exactly where it belonged before the employees arrived Monday morning.
I opened the door and walked inside.
And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
There were large waves and ripples throughout the carpet.
My first thought was:
“Oh my! What did I do?”
Remember, I was still learning. Seeing a carpet that had looked perfectly fine when I left it the day before and had now developed large waves was certainly enough to get my attention.
I thought about it for a while.
Then I started putting the pieces together.
The office had been extremely humid all day Saturday. I had then steam-cleaned the carpet, adding even more moisture to the environment and to the carpet itself.
I concluded that the carpet backing had absorbed a tremendous amount of moisture. The support materials in the backing had responded to that moisture, causing the carpet to expand and ripple.
Fortunately, I had come back on a Sunday rather than having the office staff discover it Monday morning.
And fortunately, Sunday turned out to be a beautiful, dry day with plenty of sunshine.
So I opened several windows. I opened the front and rear doors of the office and created as much air exchange as I could.
Then something happened that I will never forget.
The carpet started to flatten out.
It was almost as if the carpet were alive.
As the dry air circulated through the office and the moisture level in the carpet decreased, I could actually see the waves disappearing.
Within about an hour, the carpet was lying nice and flat again.
What a relief.
Two Very Important Lessons
Looking back, both of these experiences taught me something.
The blue-to-green carpet taught me that a dramatic change in color doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve permanently damaged a carpet. Sometimes chemistry is doing something that looks much worse than it actually is.
The rippled carpet taught me how important moisture, humidity and drying conditions can be when cleaning carpet.
And perhaps most importantly, both experiences taught me something that no textbook or training manual could have taught me quite as effectively as seeing it happen myself.
I was lucky.
I learned these lessons firsthand early in my career, when I was the only person standing there wondering, “Oh my! What did I do?”
Thankfully, in both cases, the carpet recovered.
After more than 55 years in this business, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn. Some lessons come from experience, some come from studying the chemistry and construction of carpet, and some come from those moments when you stand in a customer’s building looking at something you have never seen before.
Those are the moments you tend to remember.