When you talk with your friends and the subject of carpeting comes up, I’d take as a personal favor if you’d warn them: Often enough new customers tell me that their carpet salesman told them not to clean their carpeting until “you just have to.” “Once you clean your carpeting, it will get dirty faster,” they say. Our houses will also fall down around our ears if they aren’t build right. Does that mean we should live in a cave?

If carpeting is cleaned properly, rapid soiling won’t be a problem. But there are also two other facts:
1) Carpeting that is not cleaned will have to be replaced sooner.

2) Maintaining carpet properly can double it’s life. Are these the reasons some carpet sales people are passing out this very bad advice?
“The sooner people ruin their carpeting, the sooner they’ll buy more,” seems to be their rationale.

EPA Warning!

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more and more people are succumbing to allergies and asthma because we are not keeping our indoor environments clean. “The pollutants are coming indoors, but we’re not cleaning them out. We spend no more than .05% of our income on cleaning,” says Dr. Michael Berry, Deputy Director, EPA.

You’re heard it a thousand times: “People don’t listen.” Well, it just ain’t true!

At the beginning of my last newsletter, I talked about the advantages of pre-scheduling carpet cleaning: You get service when it’s needed and when you want it. You avoid excessive soil damage, the sudden rush, confusion, and hassle. And your carpeting stays pretty. Planned management makes sense. Still, even I was surprised by the number of calls I’ve gotten to pre-schedule cleaning with our flexible arrangement.
More proof that people listen: My last newsletter ended with a discussion on atmospheric soil buildup in formal areas. More calls came to clean them. “I know you’re right. I just never thought about it,” one client commented. Smart people do listen! The best solution to any problem is to avoid it. Don’t delay. Get it out of the way. A 60-second phone call can prevent future problems.

REMEMBER
Our purpose in life is help you solve problems. When you don’t call for free advice, we feel … So Unnecessary!!!

We are your Carpet Maintenance Recourse and Resource

And the best Free advice I can give you is, don’t waste your resources.

Call Shure Clean: (770) 917-9400

A prospective customer mentioned that she had recently gone to her doctor because of her allergy problems and that he had given her a nasal spray sample. “If this works for you, let me know, and I’ll phone in a prescription,” the doctor said. “Well, the spray was the best I’ve ever used,” she explained.
“So, when I was almost out of it, I decided to call for a prescription. But I though I’d first check with the pharmacy to see what it cost. I couldn’t believe it.
One ten-gram container, a three-week supply, cost $61.00! Can you believe it? That adds up to $1067.50 a year just on nasal spray. But what do you do?”

Getting back to her carpet, I asked how old it was and when it was last cleaned. “Well, let’s see. It was put down six years ago next month, and it’s never been cleaned.” Because carpet collects shoe soil, we don’t spread it all over the house. That’s a plus!
But, just like trash containers, they must be cleaned periodically, otherwise these contaminants threaten health. If this lady was willing to spend even half the cost of her nasal spray on carpet cleaning, she would probably cut all of her medical expenses, not just nasal spray.

More Good Advice From the Mouths of Babes:

“Never trust a dog to watch your food.” Patrick,age 10.
“Don’t squat with your spurs on.” Noronha, age 13.
“When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair.” Taylia, age 11.
“Never allow your three-year old brother in the same room as your school assignment. ” Traci, age 14.
“Never pee on an electric fence.” Robert, age 13.
“Puppies still have bad breath even after eating a Tic-Tac.” Andrew, age 9.
“Never hold a dust buster and a cat at the same time.” Kyoyo, age 9.
“You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.” Armir, age 9.
“If you want a kitten, start out by asking for a horse.” Naomi, age 15.
“Felt markers are not good to use as lipstick.” Lauren, age 9.
“When you get a bad grade in school, show it to your mom when she’s on telephone.” Alyesha, age 13.
“Never try to baptize a cat.” Eileen, age 8.

A client called when I was out and left a message. “Remove the spots on the carpet in my family room. No other cleaning is needed. Just remove the spots.” And she added that, while she was going to be out of town, she had left the key to her home with a neighbor.

I went to her home and removed spots, as requested. But when the lady returned home, she called. “You left a huge spot. I can’t understand how you could have missed it,” she said.

I went back to her home immediately. And as we walked into her family room, I looked around but couldn’t see the spot I missed, much less a “huge” one. “Where is the spot?” I asked.

“You still don’t see it? It starts right here and ends over there,” she explained. She was talking about the soiled pathway that ran across the room from one door to another. “Ma’am, that’s not a ‘spot.’ It’s a dirty path.”
“Well, it’s a ‘spot’ to me,” she said.

Of course, I apologized for the misunderstanding and cleaned the pathway. But later it occurred to me that many of our clients may also believe that I think as they think, which, of course, may or may not be the case.

I have come to realize that everyone has a different perception of reality. We must understand this when talking to others and especially our clients. The way one person perceives one thing may not be the way you perceive the same thing. We must all be patient and understanding as we all look at things differently. As I said before….different people think differently.

Why do some carpeted path-ways look dull and dingy even after carpet cleaning?

There are two potential causes:

1. The carpet was not cleaned thoroughly. Since soil absorbs light, the carpet looks dingy. Ground in filth, such as in pathways, can be difficult to remove So, never permit pathways to become excessively soiled before you clean.

2. Carpet soils contain huge amounts of grit. Grit is a microscopic rock with many sharp, gagged cutting edges. So, walking on soiled carpeting is like walking on sandpaper. The grit gouges and scratches the yarn’s smooth, polish finish. After it has been scratched and gouged by abrasive grit, it can’t reflect light rays as well, causing it to look dull and lifeless. The dullness is damage, and no amount of cleaning can remove it.If you want to keep your carpet looking beautiful (and sanitary) clean your high traffic areas as soon as soil begins to show.

Walking on soiled car-pet is like walking on sandpaper! Make sure you hire someone that does professional carpet cleaning for the best results.

Call Shure Clean Carpet Systems to ensure that you have your carpets properly cleaned every time!

Carpet or hard surface flooring – which is really best?

The answer might surprise you
Many homeowners are learning how expensive shortsightedness can be. However, many others
still don’t know the whole story: For roughly 10 years, the popularity of hard-surface floors were
abounding as carpet sales dropped. However, for the last three years, carpet sales have been on the
rise again. Why the turnaround?
The two primary reasons many people went to hard surfaces were …
1) Ease of maintenance. Sweep it, mop it, and forget it … so they thought. And with hard
surfaces, they no longer had to endure the ugly, dirty pathways.
2) Once hard surfaces were installed, they no longer had to be concerned with replacing them, at
least not for a very long time.
So, the additional expense seemed worth it. However, once they had spent far more money
buying brick, Mexican tile, hardwood and other hard surface types, many people found that their
insights were not all that insightful: They discovered that …

 

•  Hard surface floors accumulate soils just like carpeting. They found that many hard surface types were just as difficult to clean, … that simply mopping the floors didn’t remove the ugly dirt that had collected in designer crevices and grout.

•  They had a noise pollution problem in their homes. Quieter, previously-carpeted rooms suddenly became nosier because hard surfaces didn’t absorb sound.

•  The likelihood of physical injuries from falls was greater, having no carpet and pad, no softness under foot, to fall upon. And they found that there were more falls from coming indoors with damp shoe leather on rainy days. Children and the elderly were injured most commonly.

•  They were right. There were no excessively soiled pathways. Now the shoe soils were distributed equally all over the house.

•  Indoor air quality had dropped, and allergy problems increased. Air currents created by foot traffic and air conditioning systems stirred settled dust back into the air, while carpeting did a better job of holding it in place. They found that they couldn’t sweep their hard surfaces but had to mop, because sweeping stirred dust into the air.

• While their hard surfaces endured longer, people found that they were also getting bored with the same décor. Yes, they could buy new furniture and drapes. But these new furnishing somehow didn’t look all that new, sitting on older floors they were tired of looking at but had spent thousands more to install.

It appears that carpeting offers far more advantages than hard surfaces, which explains the increase in carpet sales. Still, it’s also obvious that—hard or soft—there is no final solution to the floor-maintenance problem. We must accept the fact that—whatever covers the floor—it has to be cleaned and should be properly. Further, proper maintenance is no job for a ‘handyman.’ It requires knowledge, expertise, and caring. We have the knowledge. We have the expertise. And we care a bunch! Pleasing you is our objective.

We want to serve your on-going maintenance needs and do so according to your wishes. But, to do so, we need your help: As we serve you, tell us what you want. Explain your concerns. Point out your problems. Don’t take the chance that anything will be overlooked, because …
Pleasing you is important to us. Let us know when we succeed. And let us know when we fail. Teach us how to be your ‘good servant.’