Carpets will smell fresh and clean in 20 minutes with 1 natural item | UK | News

Carpets can make homes feel lovely and cosy, but they do come with their drawbacks when it comes to cleaning.

While regular vacuuming can help to remove dust and dirt, it’s much trickier to try and rid your carpet of unpleasant smells. Nasty odours can build up from trapped moisture, dirt, debris and mould, while accidental spills or pets can make carpets smell worse. The key to keeping your carpet smelling fresh is ensuring you have good ventilation as moisture in the air is a major cause of smells getting trapped in the fibres.

But if you’re struggling to eliminate odours and don’t want to use expensive, chemical-based cleaning products to tackle the problem, there is a cheap natural alternative you can try instead.

Experts recommend using used tea bags to clean and deodourise your carpet. Simply leave your used tea bags to dry out and then cut open the sachet and sprinkle the tea leaves over your carpet. Allow the tea leaves to sit on the carpet and absorb the odours for around 20 minutes before vacuuming them up.

Tea specialists Tea Vivre explains: “Can’t find an efficient way to get rid of the unpleasant odor on your carpets? Or feel disappointed with your vacuum cleaner? 

“Sprinkle some loose tea leaves or dried steeped tea leaves across your stinky carpet and let them sit for 20 minutes to an hour. Then vacuum them up. If you use steeped tea leaves, make sure they should be dry, you don’t want them to be too wet to stain the carpet.”

Tea bags are an ideal cheap natural item for tackling mild smells, but if you’re trying to rid your carpet of a really stubborn odour you may need to combine the tea leaves with another ingredient.

Cleaning experts suggest combining dried tea leaves with some baking soda and sprinkling this liberally across your carpet.

Again, leave this on for at least 20 minutes – although if you can leave it longer it will be more effective – and together the two items will work really well together to absorb and neutralise strong odours, before vacuuming it off.

Baking soda specialists Arm and Hammer says: “The longer the baking soda stays on the rug, the more odor, dirt, and oil it will absorb, for a more thorough clean. Try leaving baking soda on the carpet overnight and vacuuming in the morning.”