Area Rugs and Hard Surface Cleaning

The trend of putting ceramic tile and hardwood flooring into homes continues to grow with no end yet in sight. Carpet cleaners who have not kept up with this trend have found less and less wall to wall carpet to clean in such homes, though there are those who have are profiting by diversfying into hard surface cleaning in their customers homes.

There is another opportunity that now presents itself in such homes:

Cleaning of area rugs.

Few who have moved to hard floor surfaces find that they like "bare floors". It doesn't take long for them to get some type of area rug to create a less stark appearance in the room, as well as providing some cushion and warmth underfoot. The dominance of area rugs has become such that those who have attended large floor covering shows have been stunned at the large amount of "area rug only" displays that they are finding.

How comfortable are you with cleaning area rugs? Are you able to test and identify expensive (and potentially easy to damage) natural fiber products versus inexpensive synthetic imitations? Can you solve the heavy urine odor and staining problems many of these rugs are exposed to?

In my next blog entry, I'll discuss the opportunities that are opening up for cleaners in this field that was once large, became small, and is growing exponentially right now.

Mold Inspection: Scams or Expedient Behavior?

I had the opportunity to view a video clip last week that should be of interest to all cleaners and restorers who have anything to do with the mold remediation industry:

http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=199430

A few points to note:

There are a few things that might not be obvious at first regarding the "set up":

Cosmetics were used to simulate the mold, but the "homeowner" did lie when she said that she cleaned the substance off and it came back again. She also made at least one other deceptive comment when she mentioned she'd been coughing a lot.

Those "set up" comments were, of course, dishonest, but they did serve to reveal the fact that none of the cleaner/restorers shown insisted on independant, third party testing. In the narrow confines of an edited news presentation, its difficult to know what other things were said and done to bring the company representative to their conclusions, but the bottom line is that testing should have been insisted on, rather than dismissed as unnecessarily expensive.

These individuals were likely not "scam artists". Instead, they appear to have belonged to a much larger group of business people who, when given the opportunity, take the easy way out to get the "easy sale". This self serving behavior put each of them in a very bad position in the public eye, and they only have themselves to blame.