Please explain

[huskyvacs]

I have hardwood floors original to my house from 1950. Real oak. Unsealed. They were buried under the carpeting when I threw away the carpeting due to cat urine damage in 2009. Absolutely gorgeous flooring. I have area rugs stuck down in various places. I would never go back to wall to wall carpet. I need to find a way to clean the dirt out of the wood and wax it but I'm terrified of having a company come in and sand and seal them and have them be incompetent and ruin the floors. Also I have too much stuff here. I have never cleaned the floors since taking the carpeting up.

I found a wood floor cleaning spray at the dollar store that does insanely good at getting the dirt out of the wood without bleaching it, and I need to get a lot more of it. All I need to find is a good sealing wax. It would be fine to just do that every year or so, would be fine with me. I have a furnace that has large HEPA filters, and whether that is doing then job, IDK, but I never had a problem with it.

The thing about allergies is with little amounts of exposure over time, your body will adapt to it. Then it will not bother you. I used to have asthma as a kid, but that's disappeared. All I'm allergic to is dry grass clippings.

 

[centralsweeper63]

Solid wood is much better. That or good quality real tiles is the only hard floor options I would consider. Maybe try using a Kirby g-series machines and the miracle waxer set alongside the hard floor care system.

 

[ultralux88]

I vacuum regularly, and then use a Lindwash with an alcohol based cleaner in it every so often. I don't have the time or patience for this three bucket nonsense. But I don't really like bare floors over carpet. I don't find carpet overly difficult to clean, a good vacuum will remove the pet hair and all of the rest of it, save that reside that doesn't leave easily. I've had more powerful extractors than the typical household stuff for a while, so the regular cleaning with that isn't a huge deal and gets the rest of it. There's obviously rooms you never want carpet in though, kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and right up against any door that comes in from outside the house are horrible places for it.

 

[centralsweeper63]

Carpet in every room except the messy ones, kitchen, bathroom, laundry and powder room come to mind.

 

[vac14012]

I like hard floors cause you can see everything (especially if you have lights of some kind) and vacuum everything up and know it's clean. With carpet you're going in blind. I actually prefer a bagless machine on carpet cause you can tell when you've hit diminishing returns on an area/room. When I used to have wall to wall carpet i'd use a bagless machine, empty between each room and be satisfied when I visually saw little extra dust reaching the bin.

 

[centralsweeper63]

The dust moves so fast in a bagless machine that you can not see when there is that little bit of the ultra-fine dust left. You also simply cannot tell the difference between dirt you are sucking up and dirt that is getting picked up from the bin pile and swirled round again. It works, but not very well.

 

[cheesewonton]

As time goes by my homes have less and less carpet. But note that as time goes by I have more and more pets, going from one dog up to three, now two but adding two cats and a little boy. Just too hard to keep carpet looking nice. When a rug is worn out it gets sent out to garage duty and replaced by something at Costco and that seems to work for us but the high traffic areas stay hard floor.

 

[centralsweeper63]

Every person has different needs and experiences!

 

[durango159]

This is the best explanation I have heard so far. But because it hurts my head just for the sake of it let's say you had a Brand new carpet and kept it vacuumed everyday for hours changing out bags. Keeping the entire air way clean potentially changing out the brush keeping everything 100 percent efficiency. Is there a point where it would be close to nothing picked up or would it continue to leave behind or drop out dirt? I know it's not super practical in a demo situation but what if a person was super OCD about it possible?

I'm sure in the most OCD like situation that you stated above, that it's possible to have 100 % clean carpet. The reality is that having the situation you just described is NOT a reality!
Most households vacuum on average once or twice a week. Dirt gets trapped in carpet through movement. The more movement, the more particles get buried down into the pile of carpet. Movement could be anything from chair and furniture legs being dragged over the carpet, pets and people walking with or without shoes. Carpet bases break down into fine pieces of sand. Sand breaking loose from the carpet base itself and additional sand, food particles, gravel and other dirt coming into the home both get trampled down into the carpet and those harsh materials shred and tear carpet fibers.

Most consumers that vacuum do one or two passes as a very fast rate with a poor maintained vacuum cleaner. From tons of hair wrapped around the brush roll, bristles that that have been run over metal door thresholds sanding down the bristles, clogged filter pores. A fast moving brush roll spreading carpet fibers apart with reduced airflow can trap and hide dirt and foreign objects deeper into the pile with use of a poorly designed vacuum or poorly maintained unit. In many homes the situation almost gets worse before better but yet the surface of the carpet looks clean as most vacuums are at least good at surface cleaning.

 

[huskyvacs]

If you want to really know why being OCD about dirt is futile, consider the following;

Humans shed a significant amount of skin into the air and their surroundings, generally estimated at around
1.5 grams (0.05 ounces) per day, or nearly 9 pounds (4 kilograms) per year.