Professional Carpet Care and Your Child's At-Home Birthday Party

Did your child's at-home birthday party leave your carpets a mess? Between dozens of kids traipsing through your home, the brightly frosted cake, and games galore, your flooring might have a layer of grime and debris. Before you scrub your home's carpets yourself, take a look at what you need to know about professional post-party cleaning services.

What Should You Do About Mud in Your Carpets?

An indoors and outdoors kids' party means one thing - at the end of the day, your carpets are likely covered in mud. Unless your yard is completely concrete, your pint-sized party guests likely will get into the dirt. Add any amount of moisture water balloons, aqua activities, puddles, a paddling pool, or even juice pouches and you have a recipe for a major mud-fueled mess.

You don't need to stress if your child's friends tracked in more mud than you expected. Resist the desire to rub the mud out with a wet towel. This won't help to clean your carpets. Instead, it will force the now-soaked mud deeper into the carpet's fibers.

Let the mud dry and vacuum up any loose pieces. While this will help the messy post-party issue, this isn't likely to completely eliminate the problem. A carpet cleaning company can do the rest of the work and reduce the risks of permanent stains or damage to your flooring.

What Should You Do About Cake in Your Carpet?

In a perfect world, the kids would keep the cake in the kitchen. But this likely didn't happen during your child's birthday party. Did your child's friends carried the hot pink or bold primary-colored frosted cake into almost every area of your home's first floor? While cake on a plate won't cause a problem for your flooring, some (or more than some) might have landed on the carpets - icing side down.

Like mud, never use a wet towel to clean frosted birthday cake from a carpet. Again, this will drive the debris deeper into the carpet's fibers. This makes it more difficult to clean completely and can permanently stain your flooring. If dried pieces of icing or large chunks are on the floor, pick up and remove the frosting.

Most commercial icing products have colorful dyes that are tricky to remove from fabrics and fibers. Even though the dried crumbs from the cake itself are easy to vacuum away, you may need professional help to eliminate a potentially costly icing issue. Failure to clean the color correctly may ruin the carpeting. This could cost you unnecessarily in the price of a full replacement.

What Should You Do About Other Kids' Party Messes?

Mud and cake aren't the only party time problems your carpets face. Arts and crafts, games, and other birthday activities can leave behind marks or stains. Your child's guests can quickly grind paint, tape, or food during the party into the carpets. This makes it important to have a professional on-call.

If possible, contact a carpet cleaning contractor when you schedule the party. Make an appointment for the evening of the party - after the guests leave. You can wait until the next day if necessary. But the longer the mud, muck, and paints sit on your carpet, the more likely they'll permanently stain the flooring.

What Should You Do If You Don't Clean the Carpets Correctly?

In a post-party cleaning frenzy, did you cover the carpets with buckets of soapy water? While this may have washed away some of the surface stains, it also likely drove the debris deep into your carpets. After the water finally dried, did your carpets have off-colored marks and a musty scent? Before you get replacement quotes, call a professional cleaner. The cleaner can possibly correct a cleaning mistake you made in haste.

Do your carpets have mud marks and other post-party problems? Contact All State Carpet & Tile Care for more information.