This is how you snow-clean your rugs!
Christmas is over and it’s time to tidy up — and now it’s about time to give the rugs a proper clean again!
Snow-cleaning is an effective way to clean your rugs — provided you have snow, of course. Here we currently have unusually little snow for the season, but no need to worry... the snow will come, plenty of it.
In any case, we’ve got more than enough snow for all the rugs one could possibly have.
This should be done when the snow is fairly cold — preferably not wet and slushy. It’s also important that the ground beneath is frozen, so you don’t get dirt from the ground into your rug. If you have only a little snow, you can lay the rug out on a porch floor and shovel snow over it. We took our rugs and headed out onto the lake. The ice is, of course, clean and perfect — and you get as much space as you want.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Roll up your rugs and take them outside to a suitable spot. Bring a broom.
2. Shake the rugs well and then lay them out in the snow. If the rug has a top and bottom side, the top side — the one you walk on — should face down toward the snow. Rag rugs can be cleaned on both sides.
3. Walk over the rug to work the snow into it, but make sure there’s nothing sharp or dirty underneath.
4. Flip the rug and repeat if it’s a rag rug.
5. Brush off the snow with the broom. Work the broom into the rug a bit to draw out both the snow *and* the dirt. Flip and repeat until you’re satisfied.
6. Shake the rug and give it a few whacks with the broom.
Since most of the snow comes off when you shake/beat the rug, it won’t be particularly wet when you bring it inside. Still, if you have nice parquet flooring, you should hang it to dry for a bit before laying it back down. You’ll notice that the snow you brush/beat off becomes discolored — a great sign that the method works.
As long as nothing unexpected happens, this cleaning will keep the rugs fresh all the way until spring — when it’s once again time to scrub rugs on the dock.
A stack of clean, fresh rugs feels great to bring back inside!