5 Tips for Dealing With Pet Hair on Your Carpet

You no doubt love your pets, but you're probably less thrilled when they shed, leaving you forever trying to keep your carpet clean.

As well as being messy, pet hair can also shorten the life of your carpet and your vacuum cleaner.

Here are five tips for controlling pet hair in your home.

1. Wield the rubber broom

Pet hair ranges from 30 to 120 microns in size, according to the Stanford Research Institute. And it's not the only hair you'll extract from your carpets – the Carpet and Rug Institute in the US states that the average adult sheds more than 300 hairs per day from anywhere on their bodies. The solution? Before you vacuum, move a rubber broom to and fro over your carpet to pick up the hair in handfuls. Your vacuum cleaner will appreciate it.

2. Pre-treatment works wonders

Pre-treat your pet's heavy traffic areas by very lightly dusting the carpet with bicarbonate of soda. It helps loosen the fibres to release those pesky hairs, and also helps deodorise as you vacuum.

3. Not the once over, please

Have you been moving your vacuum cleaner once or twice over an area and thinking the job's done? No way, according to US carpet cleaning expert, Scott Sandlin, vice-president of Shaw Industries. According to Sandlin, research has found that this method only picks up between 30% and 40% of the dirt. Criss-crossing over each area several times will do a proper cleaning job.

4. Limit your pet's ranging area

This is a tough one, but you could consider blocking your pet from carpeted areas of your home. This might be especially helpful after you bath them, as they often vigorously shake to dry themselves, and much hair can become airborne. Brushing your pet daily outdoors will also help cut down on how much hair they shed inside.

5. Aggressive cleaning

The experts recommend that if you have indoor pets, you need to vacuum not weekly, but daily. Vacuuming more often helps stop dirt and hair from filtering deep into the fibres, where it settles until you eventually can't clean the carpet anymore and it needs to be replaced.

Worth the effort

Preventing pet hair from working its way into your carpet is worth the effort in the long run. You want to keep your carpet looking good for as long as possible, and look after your vacuum filters as well.