Getting your home ready for holiday company with Zerorez carpet cleaning

This is a honest review of services received from Zerorez.  All thoughts, opinions, and pictures are all mine.

Getting ready for the holidays is not always about decorating… There is grocery shopping, menu planning, cooking, baking, hair cuts, outfits if you are doing family pictures…. and CLEANING.  Oh the cleaning – that is so not my favorite part and honestly an area where I struggle.  I love a clean house but don’t love ME actually having to get it to that point.

In fact this may be on my Christmas list this year

When I took my fall mantel pictures and ended up doing lots of cropping to get my carpet out the pictures, I realized my carpet needed some serious help.  Some professional help – cause sometimes you just gotta call in the professionals even if you are a big DIY-er. 

We have lived in this house for 11 years with the same carpet and never had it professionally cleaned… I will never do that again after this experience!  Seriously kicking myself for not doing this sooner.  We have been relatively careful with our carpet – we don’t have a dog and only a white cat – but over time and especially in recent years with my 3 nieces and nephew age 8 and under in my house on a regular basis the dirt and stains have taken over.

Evidence #1 – our living room.  Oh my – and moving the loveseat out of the way truly shows how bad the rest of the carpet looked.  Several stains which I have tried to treat but never could get clean and just a horrible dirty traffic pattern.

And the stairs had definitely seen better days.  Those big dark spots – yeah, that was a jar of blackberry jelly that was smeared all over the stairs by a certain little 2 year old nephew while I was babysitting and apparently had run upstairs for just a few minutes too long.  Oh my… kids.   I was actually surprised I was able to get it that clean with much scrubbing and several cleaners and wasn’t sure there was any hope for it.

This path through the dining room is the quickest path for bringing in groceries and was definitely showing the wear.

And I think a few drinks have gotten spilled off the end table on this section of the living room.

Ok… so now that you are thinking I should have been calling in a carpet replacement company instead of cleaning company… (believe me I was wondering too!) let’s talk about why I chose Zerorez to try to fix this mess.  I am located in Atlanta and hear advertisements on the radio all the time for Zerorez!  Radio hosts that say they had white carpet and dogs with muddy feet and were about to rip out their carpet but decided to try Zerorez first and now it looks like new.  I figured mine isn’t quite as bad as muddy dog prints on white carpets so surely I had a chance.

I reached out to Zerorez for the opportunity to try their services and share my honest review you and they agreed. I have never had my carpets cleaned professionally so I was anxious to experience the whole process.

There are a few things you need to do in preparation – I picked up all the rugs I have in the bedrooms and moved any smaller furniture, baskets, trash cans, stools, benches, etc. that I could move on top of the bed.  So only larger furniture pieces such as bed, dressers, nightstands were in room.  I was able to scoot my loveseat into my tiled kitchen area and move my coffee table too to create a large area in living room accessible for cleaning.  They also ask that you vacuum beforehand as well.

I was excited when this van pulled in my driveway.

My technician’s name was Deparr and he was funny, easy to talk to, and seemed very knowledgeable and put me at ease.  We did a walk through the house where I showed him rooms I wanted cleaned and point out stains or areas I was concerned about.  Then it was time for him to get to work and he worked fast!   This is pretty much how he looked during the process and he did a great job.

Another reason why I wanted to use Zerorez is I had heard amazing things about their no-chemicals, no soap or residue, quicker dryer times, and Empowered Water cleaning method.  Here’s a better explanation of the difference of their method vs. any other carpet cleaning company from their website:

ZEROREZ® cleaning services are based on our unique Empowered Water™ technology. Empowered Water™ is enhanced water that is electrolyzed and oxidized to create a powerful cleaning solution without harmful toxins, soaps or detergents

Traditional steam carpet-cleaning uses heated water mixed with soaps, detergents and toxic chemicals that are injected into the carpet under pressure, which soak your carpets, pads and backing. Even though some of the soap, dirt and water are removed, a considerable portion of this mixture remains embedded in your carpet. As the carpet dries, the detergent attaches to the carpet fibers and literally acts as a magnet for dirt and other substances.

Conversely, the ZEROREZ® cleaning system does not use soaps, harsh detergents or shampoos to clean, but uses instead a revolutionary, non-toxic water-based cleaning agent as its cleaning fluid, called “Empowered Water™,”which cleans better than soap without leaving a sticky residue behind.

Empowered Water™is applied to your carpet fibers by a patented high-pressure, controlled spray system that loosens embedded dirt and removes it through our powerful and patented extraction wand. Your carpet is clean without any residue and the dry time is dramatically reduced because we don’t flood your carpets with water, unlike most other carpet cleaners. Our extraction wand combines the joint properties of fluid mechanics and pressure dynamics. This means that we clean down to the bottom of your carpets’ fibers—removing embedded dirt, soils, dried soaps (if previously cleaned by another carpet cleaner) and other debris.

Another great benefit of the ZEROREZ® cleaning system is that spots are much less likely to reappear. Reappearing spots are often the result of wicking action from the back of the carpet to the tips of the carpet fiber as the carpet dries. We eliminate this and de-lamination (caused by conventional hot water extraction cleaning methods) because we do not penetrate the primary backing.

I could actually tell the water was heated from some steam coming from it – Deparr said that the water is heated to 270 degrees!

So I actually got an in-process shot as he was cleaning the living room as I sat there in amazement… Do you see that line?  The top is the part he cleaned and the bottom is the still dirty part.  And this is just general dirt/traffic pattern stains not a food/drink/pet stain.

I think he was done in about an hour and half and I had 3 bedrooms, stairs, living room, and half of my dining room cleaned.   It was raining and cold that day so the drying took a bit longer but I turned fans on and the heat up and the carpets were completely dry later that evening

Here’s some before/after shots.

The big grape juice stain at the edge of the living room carpet – GONE!

Stairs – CLEAN!   Wow – I was extremely pleased with how good they came out.  And I know lighting from different times of the day (I took all these photos the same day) makes it look different but in person I can tell how much “whiter” my carpet looks.  I notice it the second I come home or look at a different section of the room.  There was just a dinginess of built up dirt, dust, and grime that had built up in the fibers. 

And here’s the living room.  There is still a faint traffic pattern/wear but that is to be expected after 11 years.  And once the furniture is back in place and you don’t see the “brand new” carpet underneath the couch the carpet looks perfectly clean.

The bedrooms turned out great too.  I didn’t get a before shot but our room had stains on this side of the bed that we don’t know what they were?  Not food – maybe just grease and dirt off my husbands work clothes?

 

You know another thing I noticed was that brown/gray line you get next to your baseboards of dust/dirt buildup?  I actually had done a recent pretty deep clean and vacuum along all the main living areas baseboards while I was painting them this past summer.   But it was still there.  But after getting the carpets cleaned that line/buildup is pretty much gone – I can tell a big difference! 

Deparr actually recommended that I get our air ducts cleaned.  He said he could tell by that buildup and also just buildup in the carpet (and on some of the vent returns that were covered in dust even though I recently vacuumed them this summer) that our ducts are probably filled with quite a bit of dust and dirt.  Zerorez actually offers that service so that may be something we do in the future. 

And I asked how frequently you should get your carpets professionally cleaned (since I knew I WELL exceeded that!).  He said they recommend getting them done yearly unless you have several young kids, pets or just more mess than normal.  I know I will definitely not be putting this off this long again.  I have been embarrassed especially in the last year to even have company over because the carpets looked so bad and wish I had done this a LOT sooner.    By the way it has been 4 days since we got them done and no stains have reappeared and it still looks just as good as it did later that day once they were dry.

Big thank to Zerorez for cleaning my carpets and letting me share my honest opinion of the process and results on my blog.  I literally have already and would recommend them to my closest friend and my only complaint was that he showed up a bit early for my appointment time and I wasn’t done vacuuming and didn’t have our cat locked up. But he was very gracious and patient and honestly I would rather have them arrive earlier rather than late.

So please tell me I am not the only one that has dirty carpets like this??  With life and kids it just seems inevitable.  But I am thankful when my spot cleaning or even DIY carpet cleaning doesn’t do the trick I have a professional I can call to get it all clean.  Maybe that it is Santa’s way of giving me (and you!) a little of a self-cleaning house.  

If you need to get your carpets cleaned before the in-laws arrive, Zerorez has a special going on right now:  Get 3 rooms cleaned for $139  – use coupon code ZEROREZ2013.  And you can always add on another room or stair on top of that if you need to.  There are Zerorez locations all over the United States and you type in your zip code on their website here to see what services they offer in your area. 

Disclosure: I was provided services for free in exchange for my honest review.  But all thoughts, opinions, pictures are all mine.