Carpet Cleaning

I hate wall to wall carpets. Some people tell me: "all you need to do is vaccuum clean them" but I find they are extremely hard to keep clean. To my mind it's a very stupid thing to put on the floor. If you are going to put a fabric on the floor it ought to be possible to lift it up and wash it. While older apartments in the US usually have wooden floors, almost all rental apartments here in Australia (at least in Canberra) have wall to wall carpets. I've noticed that at least one of our neighbours has wooden flooring, but landlords think carpeting is a cheaper option. On the other hand, most houses here do have wooden flooring (at least older ones). In the Middle East, where I've also lived, everyone has ceramic or stone tiling. That's the most sensible option in my opinion though wood feels much warmer in cold climates. The floor can be cold in Jerusalem (800 metres above sea level) in the winter.

Our kitchen is an island in the middle of our huge living room and though the kitchen has marble like or ceramic floortiles the carpet comes right up to the edge of the island containing the sink and the largest workspaces and those areas are particularly hard to keep clean. Anyway, last weekend we bought one of the machines pictured above ("Bissell Petwash"). I just used it for the first time and so far the results look great. Skeptics would be amazed how much detritus as well as dirt came out of a freshly vacuumed carpet. The cost was $A299 at Harvey Norman. Yeah you can hire a machine for $A40 a pop and then add on $A10-20 or so for the chemicals. Getting professional cleaning done costs at least $A200 a go. The latter is clearly the least frugal option. I reckon it's about even between buying and renting a machine. We've been here less than a year so I'd want to be cleaning every six months probably. In that case, buying probably wins.

P.S. No we don't have pets. Don't be put off by the name of the machine and think it isn't suitable for general carpet cleaning. It is.