A look at what you can expect before, during, and after we clean your carpet or upholstered furniture
When you hire a company for professional carpet cleaning or upholstery cleaning, you probably have some basic questions: When will the technician arrive? What should I do before they get here? Will my furniture be moved? How wet will the carpet be? How long will it take to dry?
When will the technician arrive? What should I do before they get here? Will my furniture be moved? How wet will the carpet be? How long will it take to dry? When can I put my furniture back?
After 56 years in the carpet cleaning and upholstery cleaning business, I’ve learned that good cleaning isn’t just about the cleaning itself. A successful job starts with good communication, careful preparation, and making sure the customer and technician are on the same page about what is going to be done.
Here’s what you can expect when Alec’s Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning comes to your home for a Professional Carpet Cleaning
Scheduling Your Appointment
We do our best to schedule our technicians in a way that allows us to work efficiently in a particular area while also taking into consideration when the customer would like us to arrive.
Every household has different needs.
For example, some customers need to leave for work at 8:00 in the morning. They may ask us for a 7:30 appointment so they have time to meet the technician, walk through the house, explain what they would like done, and then leave for work.
Other customers may work from home, have young children, or simply prefer not to have anyone arriving early in the morning. They may not want an appointment before 10:00.
We understand that.
We try to accommodate our customers’ schedules whenever possible while also coordinating our technicians’ routes efficiently. We don’t believe there is one “right” appointment time for everyone.
The Walk-Through: Making Sure We’re on the Same Page
When we arrive, one of the first things we like to do is walk through the home with the customer.
This is an important part of the appointment.
We want to know exactly what you would like cleaned, but we also want to hear about any special concerns you may have.
Perhaps there is a particular stain that concerns you. Maybe there is a piece of furniture that needs special attention. Perhaps there is an area of carpet that receives considerably more traffic than the rest of the room.
The walk-through gives us an opportunity to discuss these things before we begin.
It is especially important when the customer plans to leave while we are working.
Many of our customers have jobs, appointments, errands, or other personal obligations and may not be home when the cleaning is completed. They are trusting us not only to do the work they requested, but also to secure their home when we leave.
That trust is something we take seriously.
Deciding What Furniture Can—and Should—Be Moved
During the walk-through, we also discuss furniture.
In most cases, we will move the furniture that can reasonably and safely be moved. This may include:
- Sofas
- Loveseats
- Chairs
- Tables
- Nightstands
- Smaller pieces of furniture
- Other movable items
But there are times when moving a particular piece of furniture simply isn’t practical—or isn’t a good idea.
For example, consider a large dining-room cabinet filled with expensive china. Moving the cabinet could create an unnecessary risk to both the furniture and its contents.
Or consider a king-size bed in a relatively small bedroom where there simply isn’t enough room to move it safely.
An entertainment center loaded with electronics, cables and wiring is another example.
The goal isn’t to move everything simply because we can.
The goal is to clean the carpet or upholstery thoroughly while protecting the customer’s home and belongings.
That’s why we discuss these situations with the customer before we begin.
Protecting Furniture From Damp Carpet
When furniture is placed back onto freshly cleaned carpet, we don’t want the legs or base of the furniture sitting directly on damp carpet.
Depending on the furniture, we may use plastic furniture tabs or squares under the legs, or Styrofoam blocks under flat-bottomed tables and similar pieces.
These provide a barrier between the damp carpet and the furniture.
Although a carpet may be substantially dry in approximately eight hours under average conditions, there may be little or no air circulation underneath a plastic furniture tab or Styrofoam block.
For that reason, we recommend leaving these protective pieces in place for a few days, rather than removing them as soon as the carpet feels dry.
In fact, I’ve occasionally returned to a customer’s home a year later and found that the plastic squares were still underneath the furniture.
It certainly doesn’t hurt to leave them there.
And in many cases, you don’t even notice them. Under sofas and chairs, for example, the furniture skirt often hides them completely.
How Wet Will My Carpet Be?
This is one of the things we like to explain before we leave the customer with freshly cleaned carpet.
Professional wet cleaning means that the carpet will be damp after cleaning. Under average conditions, we generally expect the carpet to dry in approximately eight hours, although drying time can vary depending on the carpet, weather, humidity, temperature, airflow and other conditions.
We encourage customers to limit walking on the carpet as much as reasonably possible while it is drying.
But we also understand that you still have to live in your home.
If you need to walk across the carpet, we recommend wearing clean shoes with a synthetic sole or clean white socks.
Just remember that your feet may become wet.
And there is another thing people sometimes don’t think about: the flooring next to the carpet can become slippery.
If you walk from wet carpet onto tile, hardwood or another smooth flooring surface, moisture on the bottom of your shoes or socks can make that surface slippery.
A Trick I Use in My Own Home
When I clean the carpets in my own home, I use a very simple trick.
I place a clean, dry towel on the adjoining hard floor.
There are actually two reasons I do this.
First, the towel helps absorb some of the moisture from the bottoms of my feet.
Second, it serves as a visual reminder.
When you have freshly cleaned carpet throughout your home, it can be surprisingly easy to forget which areas are still damp. Having a towel at the transition between the carpet and another flooring surface gives you a very obvious reminder to be careful.
Sometimes the simplest solutions work best.
What Happens After Upholstery Is Cleaned?
Upholstered furniture has its own drying considerations.
After cleaning upholstery, we typically position the seat and back cushions upright, forming something of a “teepee.”
The reason is simple: we want to allow as much air as possible to circulate around the cleaned surfaces.
Just like carpet, upholstery needs time to dry.
Under average conditions, upholstered cushions may take approximately four hours to dry, although actual drying time can vary.
Because the inside and underside of cushions can retain moisture longer than the exposed surfaces, I generally recommend that customers wait until the following day before returning the cushions to their normal positions.
That extra time helps make sure the cushions are thoroughly dry.
What You Can Expect From Us
One of the things I’ve learned over 56 years is that professional cleaning isn’t simply about putting equipment in a house and cleaning whatever is in front of us.
The job begins before the first piece of equipment is turned on.
It begins with scheduling the appointment around the customer’s needs when possible.
It continues with a careful walk-through of the home.
We discuss what is being cleaned, what furniture can safely be moved, what special concerns the customer has, and anything else that could affect the job.
Then we clean with the goal of doing the best job possible while taking care of the customer’s home and belongings.
And when we’re finished, we don’t consider the job complete simply because the cleaning equipment is back in the van.
We want you to understand how to care for the freshly cleaned carpet or upholstery while it dries, how to protect your furniture, and what you can expect over the next several hours.
After all, we’ve been doing this since 1970.
We’ve learned that the difference between simply cleaning something and providing professional carpet and upholstery cleaning often comes down to the details.
That’s what we try to provide every time we enter a customer’s home.
Other services we offfer our clients are
Have a question for Alec?
If you have a question about carpet cleaning, upholstery cleaning, area rugs, fabric protection, or caring for the textiles in your home, Ask Alec.
After 56 years in the business, I’ve probably encountered something similar before—and if I haven’t, I’d still like to hear your question.