How To Make Baking Soda Carpet Cleaner

If you want to sidestep harmful chemicals when cleaning your home, you will naturally reach for DIY ingredients that help you save money and are better for your and your family’s health. A good example of an ingredient is baking soda.

Do you have to mix baking soda with vinegar? Although you can clean your home effectively by mixing baking soda with vinegar, you can also use baking soda on its own to clean stains.

The truth is that baking soda can be used to clean a variety of surfaces and items in your home. It might surprise you to know that baking soda can also be used to give your carpets a deep clean.

Read on to find out how to use it and why baking soda is so effective as a cleaning agent.

Contents

Table of Contents

Why Is Baking Soda Such A Powerful Cleaning Ingredient?

Baking soda is usually found in many how-to articles that feature home-cleaning tips. But what is baking soda, exactly?Baking soda is a salt.

It’s a neutral compound that’s produced from a positively charged ion and negatively charged ion. It has a higher pH level than neutral which makes it a little basic – or non-acidic – in nature. This gives it many benefits as a cleaning agent, such as the following.

It absorbs odors. Unlike some ingredients that only hide unpleasant odors in the home, baking soda absorbs them. This is because most odors are acidic. Since it’s basic, baking soda neutralizes acids.
It’s got scrubbing power. Baking soda granules have a gritty texture to them so they can be used to scrub surfaces to remove debris and also make them shine.

How To Use Baking Soda As A Carpet Cleaner

Baking soda works beautifully to remove a variety of stains from your carpets. How you use it will depend on the type of stain you want to eliminate.

Using baking soda on non-greasy stains

A stain is non-greasy if it doesn’t leave behind a residue. To remove these stains, using baking soda and water will work well. Here are the steps to follow.

Cover the stain with baking soda.
Put some hot water in a spray bottle and gently mist the stain.
Let the mixture work for about three hours or longer.
To really make the baking soda and water work to lift the stain, you need to leave it damp. You can do this by placing a damp cloth over the stain.
After the hours are up, vacuum the baking soda. You should see that the stain has been removed. If the stain is still there, repeat the process until the stain comes out. You should try to leave the baking soda on the stain for longer this time, ideally overnight.

Using baking soda on greasy stains

You can also use baking soda to remove greasy stains. Here’s how:

Blot as much of the stain as you can with a cloth. Don’t rub the grease, however, as this will just cause it to penetrate deeper into the carpet fibers.
Sprinkle baking soda over the stain and leave it overnight.
The next morning, vacuum the area to remove the baking soda. You should see that the stain is gone.
If it’s a stubborn stain that’s still present, you will need to use dish soap on the stain. Blot the stain with dish soap as this will help to remove its grease.
Then, blot the stain with water and a cloth. Again, don’t rub the stain as this will cause it to move further into the carpet fibers.
Dry the area, but ensure that it’s still a bit damp.
Sprinkle the second layer of baking soda on the stain. Let it work for three or more hours, then clean it up with a vacuum cleaner.

How Can You Make Baking Soda A Stronger Stain Remover?

If you need something a bit stronger to remove a carpet stain, mix together half a cup of borax with a cup of baking soda and 15 drops of your favorite essential oil.

Sprinkle this mixture over your carpet. Let it work for a few hours or longer if possible before you vacuum it. This not only removes stubborn stains because of the borax and baking soda combination, but the essential oils will make the carpet smell nice.

A word of caution: If you have pets, you should research the particular essential oil you want to use to ensure that it’s not toxic to them.

For example, essential oils such as tea tree oil, eucalyptus oil, cinnamon oil, peppermint oil, and citrus oil are toxic to animals whether they are applied to the skin, licked up, or even if they’re simply used in a diffuser.

How To Use Baking Soda To Remove Carpet Odors

Carpets experience a lot of traffic on a daily basis so they can harbor germs and bacteria that result in unpleasant odors. As we mentioned earlier, baking soda absorbs odors so it’s a great way to eliminate them from your carpet. Here are three easy methods you can try.

Method 1

Sprinkle baking soda over the carpet. Be generous with how much you use if the carpet is in a high-traffic area of the house or it’s your pet’s favorite carpet to sleep on.
Let the baking soda work for about two hours.
Vacuum the baking soda.

It’s that easy to remove carpet odors. You can repeat this process as regularly as you like.

Method 2

Another easy DIY method you can try to remove odors from your carpets is to mix one cup of vinegar with two cups of warm water and two teaspoons of baking soda. Put it in a spray bottle and then spray your entire carpet.

This is a great cleaning solution to try if your carpet is very large and you don’t have enough baking soda in the home.

Method 3

If your carpet smells particularly bad or the odor is very strong, you can make use of essential oils. Add a few drops of your favorite essential oils to the baking soda before you apply it over the carpet.

Will Baking Soda Damage Your Vacuum Cleaner?

We’ve provided cleaning tips that make use of baking soda which later gets sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. The question is: can baking soda actually damage your vacuum cleaner?

The answer depends on the type of filter that you have in your vacuum cleaner. Some vacuum cleaners prevent very fine particles, such as those of baking soda, from entering the vacuum cleaner motor, but others don’t.

It’s therefore essential to check your specific vacuum cleaner specs and find out how well the filter works before you use it to clean up baking soda.

Can Baking Soda Damage Your Carpets?

Baking soda can’t really damage your carpets unless you’ve used a lot and haven’t removed the baking soda after you’ve applied it to the carpet, such as with your vacuum cleaner.

These small granules can become embedded in the carpet, or penetrate the carpet and end up on the floor underneath it where it can scratch the surface.

This is something to be aware of, and if you’re worried about damaging your floors, consider treating your carpet with baking soda outside or using a cleaning method that makes use of smaller amounts of baking soda or baking soda that gets dissolved.

Conclusion

Baking soda is the miracle cleaning agent that you probably already own in your kitchen or pantry. While you might use it to clean coffee stains out of mugs and absorb shoe odors, you might not realize it’s effective at cleaning stains from carpets.

After reading this article, you now know how to make baking soda carpet cleaners a thing in your home to give your carpets a great clean. As a bonus, baking soda also works well to absorb unpleasant odors so your carpets can smell as good as new.