Merry Christmas! A history of carpet cleaning

It’s Christmas Day! Before kicking off the latest blog post we’d like to wish everyone a happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year. As it’s Christmas, we’ll take a look back at some of the historical aspects of carpet cleaning and how the methods have changed over the years up to the point where companies such as our own offer specialist carpet cleaning services. Whilst our services may be extremely efficient today thanks to what we can offer, it wasn’t always like that and if you look back in history you realise just how different things were back then.

According to historical evidence, carpet cleaning became a desired aspect of home cleanliness in around the 19^th century thanks to the Industrial Revolution. This particular period in history brought about new ideas for keeping a carpet or rug looking fresh all year round.

The majority of homeowners used thick, woolly goods known as druggets. This particular strategy for carpet cleanliness would help prevent stains in the future. If you were wealthy enough, you could cover your carpets in thick canvas whilst away from home to prevent the lack of ventilation causing a build up of soot and dust. In order to clean carpets however, the only straightforward solution was to hit them with instruments such as sticks or brooms to rid them of trapped dust.

In the early 19^th century, housewives were restricted to household chores quite often and this eventually led to the emergence of customised carpet cleaning solutions. The use of lemon juice and a hot loaf of bread became an infamous technique used to clean carpets, before hanging them out to dry after a thorough soaking. With vacuums a thing of imagination, sweeping carpets became the only effective way of collecting food or dust particles on the ground.

The first ever vacuum cleaner that was manually operated became accessible in the 1870’s. Housecleaning was no longer as much of a chore as it used to be with vacuums being capable of extracting dirt and dust with ease. The first professional cleaning institutions started appearing 10 years later and this was where people could get the cleaning advice that they needed to maintain a healthy looking carpet.

The early 20^th century saw the introduction of the first electronic carpet device, known as a “carpet sweeper”. Along with manually operated cleaning devices, this was seen as the most effective way of ridding dirt from carpets. Technology began to develop over time and this saw both cleaning companies and cleaning items drastically change.

Today, companies such as Apple Clean provide incredible carpet cleaning services that can work wonders for all sorts of fabrics in the household for both long and short term effectiveness.

From everyone here at Apple Clean, a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. Here’s to another successful year of carpet, upholstery and curtain cleaning!