How to Vacuum Carpet With Baking Soda in 5 Easy Steps

Whether your pet gleefully dragged mud through your living room carpet or your child spilled smelly milk on your area rug, a baking soda vacuum treatment is an excellent way to get the carpet back to its original state. We’ll share tips and advice on the best methods for removing dirt and smells from carpets using baking soda.

Why Baking Soda Is an Effective Carpet Cleaner

If you’ve used baking soda in the past for cleaning, you’re likely used to mixing it with water, where its mild alkali properties help it to remove grease and dirt. So, you might be surprised (and relieved) to learn that you don’t have you soak your carpet in water.

That’s because when you apply baking soda to a dry surface like a carpet, it takes on an abrasive property. As a result, it does an excellent job of lifting non-greasy dirt out of fibrous materials.

Benefits of Using Baking Soda for Carpet Cleaning

You’ll experience many advantages to using baking soda for cleaning your carpet compared to other cleaning products you can buy at the store. Some of the most significant benefits include:

• 100% natural
• Non-toxic
• Safe for children and pets
• Doesn’t scratch surfaces
• Neutralizes odors

We hope you don’t have to put it to the test, but if you’re using baking soda to clean a kitchen rug and a grease fire occurs, the baking soda will even prevent the carpet from catching on fire.

Step-by-step Guide to Vacuuming Carpet With Baking Soda

Are you ready to remove odors and stains from your carpet? By following the steps below, you’ll have a carpet as good as new. Here are the step-by-step guide on how to vacuum carpet with baking soda:

Step 1: Vacuum as Normal

You want to start by vacuuming your carpet as you usually would. That way, you’ll remove loose dirt, hair, and other items that would prevent baking soda from reaching the carpet’s fibers.

Step 2: Sprinkle Baking Soda on the Carpet

Set your vacuum cleaner aside, but not too far—you’ll need it soon. Then, take a box of baking soda and sprinkle a liberal amount onto your floor or carpet. 

Baking soda can sometimes be challenging to pour, especially if it’s old or you live in a humid area. So, running the powder through a fine-mesh sieve and using that to sprinkle it around evenly is a good idea.

Step 3: Use a Broom (Optional)

If you’re treating a carpet with short strands, feel free to move on to step four.

But should you be applying baking soda to deep-pile carpeting, run a broom over it. That way, you’ll encourage the baking soda to fall between the carpet’s long fibers. You can also use a bristle brush for the same effect if you don’t mind getting down on your hands and knees to scrub your floor.

Step 4: Let It Sit

Baking soda’s power comes into play by letting it sit on your rug to help it penetrate hard-to-reach dirt and neutralize odors. So, if you’re doing a light cleaning, it’s okay to let it sit between 15 - 30 minutes. But if you want to give your carpet a deep baking soda vacuum clean, you can leave it on overnight.

Baking soda won’t damage your carpet, so you don’t have to worry about leaving it on for too long.

Step 5: Vacuum up the Baking Soda

Now it’s time to grab your vacuum again and run it over the baking soda. It should dislodge easily, but you still might want to pass your vacuum over the carpet twice.

Once you do so, assess the baking soda’s job.

Pesky dirt and strong odors should be gone or greatly improved. Of course, you can always apply a second baking soda treatment if you have an exceptionally dirty or smelly carpet.

Vacuum Tip

You don’t have to worry about baking soda changing the color of your carpet. So, it’s okay to spot-treat your carpet if there’s a particularly dirty or stinky area.

Nevertheless, it’s wise to give your carpet a deep clean every once in a while. According to researchers, carpets average 200,000 bacteria per square inch. Shockingly, this means that carpets are 4,000 times dirtier than most toilet seats.

If you’re wondering how that’s possible, it’s because people shed around 1.5 million skin cells each hour. When you spend time on carpet, skin cells fall onto them and feed germs like E. coli, salmonella, and staphylococcus, among other bacteria that most believed remained in toilets and unwashed cutting boards.

Other Strategies for Vacuuming With Baking Soda

Sometimes, you don't need a vacuum cleaner. Although the method above is the easiest way to vacuum baking soda, below are two other options you can try for bigger carpet issues.

1. Spray hot water onto the baking soda to remove stains.
2. Let the mixture sit for three hours, then vacuum it up.
3. Soak up grease with paper towels before applying baking soda.
4. Let the baking soda sit on the remaining grease overnight and vacuum it in the morning.

Does Baking Soda Ruin Your Vacuum?

Frequent baking soda vacuum cleanings can ruin your machine. So, we recommend vacuuming your carpet with baking soda occasionally and taking proper measures to check your vacuum when you finish, preventing future issues. The most common issue that baking soda causes are clogging vacuum cleaner filters. 

Use a vacuum cleaner with external filter (easier to clean). If you have a bagged cleaner, check the HEPA filter. In contrast, you’ll need to check both the cyclonic and post-motor HEPA filters on bagless vacuums.

If you own a vacuum with water filtration, there’ll be little need to worry about filter clogging when you use baking soda. That’s because these vacuums have extra-strong suction.

Finally, the worst vacuums to use with baking soda are those with a stick or upright feature. 

Get Vacuuming!

And there you go, how to vacuum carpet with baking soda. Now all that’s left to do is to get baking soda from your kitchen and put your vacuum to work. Before long, you can expect a cleaner, odor-free carpet. 

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