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We are about to blow your mind!
Okay, that may be overstating things a bit. This may not be earth shattering but it’s a pretty cool pet hack for helping to get stubborn pet hair out of your carpets.
Pet fur is one those inconvenient realities of pet ownership and some how the amount pet fur expands exponentially with more than one dog in the house. I have three dogs and you would think that would equate to three times as much pet fur but, I swear, it’s like a factor of 1000! Okay, I might be exaggerating a little but it does seem like an exercise in futility trying to get all the pet fur out of the carpet.
I have a really great “pet” vacuum and I still can’t ever seem to get all the pet out of the carpet. It’s like the pet fur and dirt become one with the rug.
I do should vacuum several times a week in order to stay on top of the fur. In all seriousness we have tumbleweeds of fur meandering across the floor and carpet on a regular basis. It’s like my dogs are Pig-Pen from the Charles Shultz Peanuts gang - you look at them and the fur screams “ABANDON SHIP!!” creating a cloud of pet hair as it leaps to the floor and carpet below.
Enter my pet hack!
Start by vacuuming really well (I mean like, really, really well) If you’re anything like me, you naturally assume that post vacuuming your carpets are clean but you would be oh, so mistaken.
After vacuuming, pick up your Furminator or similar tool and gently scrape it across the carpet* (It’ll be a little gross when you see what is still in your carpet!) Be gentle as these tools can be sharp and you don’t want to damage your carpets.
*Not recommended for really thick shag or other loop rugs are carpets
Have an Awesome Pet Hack to Share? Tell us in the Comments below!
Our housekeeper uses a rake on our carpets, which works pretty well. I love the idea of using a furminator!
Carleen recently posted…Our Tennis Ball Pet Hacks
Maybe a rake would be better! It would certainly go a little faster! 🙂
Great pet hack! I will have to share this with my sister. Her dog sheds soooooooo much! I’m sure pet parents will really appreciate this.
Kia recently posted…7 Pet Hacks for Dog Owners
Honestly, with three in the house, there are days where I’m like, “What’s the point? Embrace the dog hair!” 😉 Hope your sister finds it to be a useful tip!
I gave up on carpets years ago. I go with laminate. Makes life a lot easier, especially with cats
Laminate makes a whole lot more sense than carpet with pets in the house! 🙂
LOL. This did blow my mind …especially the part about the tumbleweeds of fur because I thought I was the only one who had these! We don’t have carpet, but might try this on the couch which is pretty much one big tumbleweed.
I thought it was bad when I just had two dogs. I would be sitting on the couch as a large dust bunny would roll across the living room floor and all I could hear was the theme song from “The Good, The Bad & the Ugly” in my head 😉
This works great! I use a slicker brush to do the same thing. It’s a habit from using one back in my groomer days to get the hair off my clothes so I didn’t take it all home with me. 🙂
I would love to do away with the carpet so clean up was easier, but I don’t think I could deal with the cold floor in the winter.
I completely agree about cold floors in the winter. Brrrr! 🙂
I have three Treeing Walker Coonhounds and three cats (all rescues). You can just imagine how much fur we get in our house. Add to that the fact that my daughter has waist-length hair (mine isn’t as long, but still long) and my daughter does a lot of sewing. In addition to pet fur, we get human hair and lengths of thread on our carpets. The hair and thread tend to wrap around the beater brush on my vacuum, which isn’t good for the vacuum (I’ve had too many belts break when the beater brush jammed up while I was vacuuming). I do have my own hack, which may not work for everyone, but helps at least with the longer strands that get wound around the beater. I use a stiff broom to go over the carpets I’m going to vacuum. It not only picks up virtually all of the human hair and threads, but gets a lot of dog fur up. It also loosens the dirt in the rug, so when I vacuum, I’m not getting as much fur, but able to get the dirt beyond it. Of course, there are still dog furs in the rug, and I’ll be honest. As long as the majority of them are gone and it looks okay, I leave it. The dogs will be shedding additional fur onto the carpet within minutes anyway.
I love your stiff broom hack! I may have to try that as I think it would go a little faster than hand scraping the rug 😉
That is a great hack! We only have carpeting in one room, and I know that it has pet hair deep down. I’ll have to give this a try.
Let me know how it goes. It works like a charm for us 🙂
You should have seen my face after you took the Furminator to the carpet, can I just say I was equally as disgusted as I was impressed! I’m not disgusted at the dog hair or it being gross or anything but by the vacuum cleaner! I always thought it didn’t work as well as I wanted it to for picking up dog hair, now I know its true! I don’t know how you came up with this but its a genius idea!!
Right?!?! It’s almost like, “why bother with the vacuum cleaner?!?” Might as well just grab a garden rake! 😉
Hi Alison! This is such a great carpet cleaning post. If I didn’t watch the video, I would never believe a vacuum would leave behind so much pet fur. Is that tool also safe couches? My favorite part of the post is the photos of your DOGS! <3 <3 <3 There must be a lot of love in your home with those three around. I bet they follow you around everywhere you go.
Thanks! I’m so glad you liked the post! I would say that people should really test using the furminator on chairs and couches as it’s not really what the tool is intended for. That being said, it’s not really meant for use on carpets either 😉 It works for me, which at least helps control the pet hair a bit.
We usually use a rake to remove hairs & some dust on our rugs, But using furminator is a good idea.
I’ll have to give this a try.
Let me know how it works for you! 🙂
What a great idea! Definitely sharing! I see you even have an expensive vacuum, and it still did not get it all, wow.
The ‘furminator’.. that is such a cool and appropriate name for this tool. Thank you for the hack!
Thanks for checking out the blog! Glad you found the hack helpful. 🙂
Hi Alison Reder, useful tips. Sometimes I use a slicker brush to do the same thing. I will try it. Thanks
Innovative, I am definitely gonna try this one. it was really helpful I was facing difficulties in cleaning my carpet but with the help of this hack, I am sure this is not gonna be a big issue anymore.
Your pups were adorable! I could imagine how much fur you get to clean every time you do. I have a tiled floor so it’s much easier to clean up rather than carpeted once so it’s a less vacuum work for me.
Very clever use of the furminator! I Never would have thought of it, but it makes total sense!