Let's face it: The major stressor of carpet for most us is when it comes to dirt. We can do our best to take off our shoes, but the truth is that our pets, guests, and others will track in dirt sooner or later. Then, you might think your biggest worry is simply vacuuming up the dirt or deep cleaning the carpet before stains set. In reality, though, there are many larger reasons why carpet is detrimental to your calm, peaceful and clean home.

The problem with carpet arises when you try to go back in time to what I consider to be a normal life, to try to be self-sufficient and live off the land.  My entire family spends a large amount of time outside in all the seasons.  This means dirt, mud and snow get tracked in multiple times a day.  We have animals and my husband takes care of them on a daily basis, so sheep poop periodically ends up on the floor.  We use wood in our wood stove to heat our home.  When the wood comes into the house, so do dirt and wood chips.  In the spring and summer, pollen and dust come in through the open windows.  My kids are not occupied with electronic devices, so their play time is often spent with things like crafts and playdough. The floor gets messy. It’s a fact of life.

If I still haven’t convinced you, here’s a few pretty yucky statistics about carpet:

• Hoover vacuum cleaners were hard to sell because potential customers refused to believe (and were even insulted by the suggestion) that they could have that much dirt in their carpets.
• Carpet cleaning recommendations say that you should vacuum the high traffic areas of your carpet every day!  Do people actually do that?  Even the cleanest homes probably only get vacuumed once or twice a week.
• Outdoor air contains pollens, fungus, bacteria, air pollution, cigarette smoke, car exhaust and hundreds of other chemicals.  We carry those things on our clothing, shoes, skin and hair.  All those chemicals, pollens and bacteria wind up in your carpet because of gravity.
• Indoor pollutants include animal hair, dander, dead skin, and dust mites. Even in calm indoor air, they all settle by gravity into the carpet.
• A person sheds about 1.5 million skin flakes an hour, most of which become embedded in our carpets. Dust mites thrive in warm, humid environments, eating dead skin cells and nesting in dust-collecting carpet.
• Each year, several pounds of soil can accumulate in and under a carpet.
• Microbiologists have identified air blown from a running vacuum cleaner as one of the five places in the home that has the highest number of germs.  Other places include dish sponges, washing machines, bathroom toilets during a flush, and kitchen trash cans.
• The Norwalk virus or Norovirus (the virus that causes the stomach flu) can survive on an uncleaned carpet for a month or more.
• Studies report that mice have dropped dead after breathing some new carpet fumes.  Would you want those chemicals in your home?
• Wall-to-wall carpeting is less healthy than smaller rugs because carpet tends to be more permanent and harder to clean.  It absorbs moisture, chemicals, liquids, crumbs, and other spills that provide molds, mildew, yeasts, and bacteria (such as e-coli) with a rich and nearly continuous supply of nutrients.

Do you avoid using carpet in your own homes for any of these reasons? Do you think it's helped the overall cleanliness of your house?

Article Source: American Homestead