Does Baking Soda RUIN your vacuum?

Baking soda is one of nature’s great deodorizers. Effective and inexpensive, baking sodabaking soda can be used in so many different ways from cooking to cleaning, and is often used to absorb unpleasant odors. Thus, baking soda and other powder-based carpet fresheners are very popular products on today’s market. When sprinkled on carpet and vacuumed up, these products purportedly work by absorbing bad smells and often have added perfumes so as to leave behind a fresh fragrance on the rug and in the room. That’s great  except for three big problems…

1. The particles of baking soda are so small, that a portion of the product remains in the carpet fiber and/or sifts beneath the rug and padding to the floor below (never to be recovered!) Don’t believe me? If you use baking soda and one day rip up your carpeting, you’ll see a surprising amount of its residue left behind!   But, in essence, that’s exactly how the product executes its claim of freshening the rug because that indeed is where much of the product stays.

Baking soda under the microscope2. There is also a serious problem caused by the physical nature of Baking Soda’s micro-particles…they’re very sharp!!  The “scrubby” texture of these grains work wonders on loosening grime or scrum from your dishes or bathtub. But left behind, buried deeply in your rug, the rough edges  slowly “saw-away” at the base of the fibers.  Walking over the rug exacerbates the situation.  This leads to the premature breakdown and thinning of your rugs. That’ll be expensive!

3. Again, due to the small particle size of baking soda or freshener product, these can clog the pores of your vacuum’s bag or HEPA filter. This can drastically reduce suction resulting in poor cleaning performance and cause clogs to form. Even worse, this dust can escape the filtration system in which your vacuum’s motor can “breathe” these particles and eventually short out.

This is not to just bash baking soda or Carpet Fresh; large quantities of any fine dust such as fireplace soot or sheetrock/construction dust is highly dangerous for almost any vacuum!

Agh But you want your carpets to smell good! Now what?! Keep in mind that, unless the product is specifically labeled as a drycleaning agent or stain remover, Carpet Freshtype powders are NOT able to remove the source of the odors. To truly clean and freshen carpets they must washed with a water solution by a carpet extractor machine or some sort of “dry” detergent agent. Think about it – how clean would your clothes be if you only sprinkled baking soda on them? Miele upright on Mohawk carpetCarpet-freshening sprays, foams or powders generally just leave behind fragranced residue that covers up lingering stink. Quite frankly, it’s the activity of vacuuming slowly and thoroughly thats achieving the results of removing the embedded, smelly and decaying particles!

A pretty aroma certainly makes your cleaning routine more gratifying and can help mask the stinky things now living in your vacuum! And the good news is that there are vacuum-freshening products available that are non-toxic, effective, are completely recoverable, and will not clog/blow up your vacuum! Fragrant Scent is a product we carry to take care of your smell vacuum without the nasty side effects! It is a product made of nicelyfragranced puffy granules (made from natural vermiculite) large enough not to fall through the carpet or clog up your vacuum. vacuums scentsJust shake a little out of the re-sealable bag onto your rug and vacuum like normal…a lovely aroma will soon emerge from the exhaust! Plus, as the granules get sucked up they also help to dislodge some of the dusty buildup, cleaning the inside of the vacuum’s hoses and tubes a bit! How’s that for multi-tasking?!

**BONUS** Mention this article during your next in-person visit to Queen Vacuum’s storefront (Shrewsbury, NJ) and receive 50% off your purchase of any one package of Fragrant Scent vacuum granules!