Pet Owner's Best Bets
Hi all, I'm Jeff Ring of JT's Carpet Cleaning and as a pet owner myself, I'd like to share some of my best bets for cleaning up after your furry friends.
While I personally enjoy the company of cats in my home, many of these tips are applicable to dog owners as well.
Read on to learn some innovative ideas to keep your home clean and comfortable for you and your pets.
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Feeding Frenzy Cleanup
We've all seen it. You put the food out for your furry friend and all of a sudden it's kibbles and bits or tuna fish flying as they dive in.
In the case of one very eccentric young pup I know, they remove the food from the bowl, place it on the floor near their favorite eating spot and then begin to eat it.
He often gets distracted and forgets about leftovers hanging out here and the owner later finds them in the dark as he walks across them barefoot feeling them crunch beneath his feet.
Does this sound like your home?
Then read on because we've got some ideas to help you out!
- Find a way to designate the feeding area for feeding and make food specific to this spot.
- One good example is to reward eating in this area only, or providing treats when the pet is in this part of the home and not in other parts. This encourages the animal to associate this area of the home with food and discourage bad habits that could lead to you finding left over food in unwanted areas of the house.
- If your pet has a habit of making a mess of the food bag, you could store it higher out of your pet's reach. In some cases it may be as simple as putting it into a plastic container that is difficult for the pet to open on its own. For smaller house dogs and small bags of doog food, cereal keepers like the one listed at the bottom of this post can be useful storage containers. For larger dogs we've seen some owners turn to medium sized trash cans repurposed to hold dog food. In the case of cats, they can be clever so you'll need to get creative depending on your own cat's habits to prevent unwanted pillaging of the food bag.
- Water bowls can also present a challenge as some pets love to slop water all over your nice clean floors while eating and keeping it dry is challenging. While this can be difficult to prevent completely, a number of products exist on the market to help reduce spillage of both food and water bowls for your pets.
Pet Hair Cleanup
As most pet owners know, the majority of furry pets also come with the dreaded shedding that inevitable comes throughout the year.
Shedding is a normal process cats and dogs in particular go through each year as they grown a winter coat to keep them warm and then lose it to help stay cool over the warmer months of the year.
While this serves an important function for your pet's comfort and health, it can lead to a cleanup disaster for you.
It can manifest itself in couches covered in hair, homes that smell like a zoo despite constant cleaning efforts, and even increased allergy symptoms for those sensitive to pet dander.
Fortunately, there are some products and services out there able to help with that.
Two such services out there are professional carpet cleaning and air duct cleaning services like those provided by JT's Carpet Cleaning.
These can removed unwanted hair and allergens from both your home's carpets and air duct system since pet hair can often end up floating in your home's air and end up lodging in the ducts.
This is often why homes with pets have lingering pet odors that can be difficult to remove.
One favorite trick of ours is to gently wet a rubber squeegee and run it across surfaces with unwanted pet hair.
The rubber and moisture help cling to the hair allowing you to easily remove it from the fabric's surface such as that of a couch.