Dh good friend has a carpet cleaning business and since we dont have much carpet in our house! (Area rug) and Carpet in 2 small rooms so he told us to get a Stema cleaner!!
we have used him to clean our carpet when we had more!!

I used to rent a rug doctor but then I got lucky and my d.h. found one someone threw away that works just fine. I've never hired anyone because we're not home owners but just rent and apartment. Maybe I'll try a professional one when I'm a homeowner to see if there really is much difference. It's so convenient to have our own because I can whip it out anytime after the kids have an episode of :hurl: .

I do both, I have a home steam cleaner and once a year I have someone do it for us. Then evey couple of weeks I do it myself, I find that this really does keep the carpets clean.

We clean it with our carpet cleaner machine every couple months but do have it professionally cleaned once or twice a year.

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A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.-Eleanor Roosevelt

We're in a new house and we have some carpet now...this is pretty foreign to me because our old house was all hardwoods. We had the carpets professionally cleaned before we moved in...they did a FABULOUS job. I don't regret it one bit! It was totally worth the money.

We hire a green company to come in and clean them. They are so soft afterwards! They use steam from the truck and peroxide to disinfect, so there are no nasty chemicals or any smell at all afterwards. Cost is about $200 CDN for about 600 square feet of carpet. They move all the furniture and put it back on little coasters that you pull out after the carpet dries. Love it.