So one of the most common questions we get here at Catalina Rug is, how do I clean my rug without having to take it to professional rug cleaning? So in this video, what we're gonna do is we're gonna show you that process of how you can clean up your rug at home in a very lightweight fashion without the risk of damaging the rug. And it will be good enough to make your rug look cleaner and remove some of the dirt and it give you a little bit more time before you will have to take it for professional rug cleaning. So the way we're gonna do this video is first I'll show you what kind of equipment and materials you need is pretty basic stuff, and then I'll show you the process step by step. So stick around and all that is coming up now.
All right, so to get started, let's go over the materials you'll need to clean your rug at home. So you'll need a couple of cotton towels, like these ones, preferably white, and make sure that they're clean. And you'll need some sort of brush like this one here that is gonna help you brush the pile of the rug. And then you'll also need some sort of soap similar to this one that we're using here. This is a dishwashing foam.
And just make sure whatever product you're using doesn't have a bleach or anything that's gonna damage the rug. So here I just wanna show you a little bit of a closeup of each of these products. So basically this is the towel that we're using. Here's a closeup of the brush that we're using, and then also the dish washing foam that we're using to clean the rug. All right, so first, before we get started with actually cleaning the rug, we're gonna go ahead and give it a nice vacuum.
First, we're gonna start with the top of the rug and make sure that we are vacuuming side to side. And also make sure to avoid vacuuming the fringes of the rug because that could damage the rug over time. So once you're done with vacuuming the front, we're gonna go to the back. All right, so now that we've finished vacuuming the front of the rug, we're gonna flip the rug over and vacuum the back. This is optional, but it really does help to remove some of the dust and debris that have gone into the pile. And depending on the size of your rug, you could use this trick where we are flipping half of the rug over and vacuuming one half. And then once we're done vacuuming this half, we're gonna move on and vacuum the other half of the rug.
All right, so now that we're done vacuuming the rug, we're ready to start actually cleaning it. So we're gonna mix the soap with some water to dilute it so that way it's not too strong. And then just go ahead and take the towel and dip it into the mixture and start gently wiping the rug and try to go with the direction of the pile. You don't want to go too much against the pile because it's gonna get into the deeper parts of the pile and it's gonna get very wet. So you're just trying to focus on cleaning the surface of the rug. And for this reason, you're gently wiping on top of the rug and just going with the pile, as we're showing you here, and of course whenever you feel like the towel is drying up, you could dip it back into the mixture to soak it up more. And for this step, I recommend doing this in sections. So pick out one section of the rug and clean it first, and then move on to the other sections. And this really depends on the size of your rug, but for example, for this rug, we tried to clean it in four different sections and the size is around a four by six.
Now as you can see here, our towel is starting to get dirty from cleaning up just one part of the rug. And this rug is actually pretty clean to begin with, but you can definitely expect that as you start doing this, your towel is gonna get very dirty. So go ahead and switch to a clean towel whenever your towel gets too dirty cuz you don't want to be distributing that dirt around the cleaner parts of the rug. So as far as cleaning the pile of the rug, that's pretty much the step that you have to take. And you'll notice that the pile of the rug is gonna be dry within 30 minutes to an hour and we're really dampening the pile. We're not getting it soaking wet. So you should expect it to dry fairly quickly and you could feel the rug and just feel the pile of the rug to make sure that it's completely dry before you start walking over it and using the rug. Now for the next step, we're gonna show you how to clean the fringes of the rug.
And of course this process is optional, but if you find that the fringes are dirty, then you could use this process to clean them. All you need is a stick of wood or something that you could place underneath to place the fringes over. And you're gonna use the same soap and water mixture that you created along with the brush to clean the fringes. And we're gonna show you how to do that next. All right, now that we have the stick in place and the fringes placed over it, you just take the brush and dip it into the mixture that we have and then start soaking and brushing the fringes from the rug towards the end of the fringes. And just make sure that the mixture gets nice and soaking into the fringe so that way the fringes start to get soaking wet and you're gonna go from one end of the rug to the other. And then once you are complete with one side of the fringes, you're gonna switch to the other side.
But do leave the stick of wood in place because it allows the fringes to dry easier. So if you can use two sticks of wood for this process, that would be the best. Otherwise, we recommend you wait for one side to dry before you work on the other side and move the stick over to clean the other side of the rug. Alright, so that's how you can clean your hand-knotted rug at home and hopefully this will make your rug look cleaner and remove some of the dirt.
And this will allow you to wait a bit longer before you have to take it for professional rug cleaning. And just something to be cautious about is to double check the products that you're using and look at the labels to make sure it doesn't have any sort of bleach or anything that could damage the rug. Also, you can check with your local professional rug cleaners about the type of product you're using to make sure that it's not gonna hurt the rug. And if you enjoy this content and you learn something from it, then I invite you to like and subscribe and comment below in this video and check out our playlist about rug care cuz we have a lot of different videos covering this topic.
And with that, I will see you in the next video.
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