Magic Carpet Ride in the Snow!

Several years ago, I wrote an article about a cleaning practice that I'd never heard of… "grassing" your sheets to whiten them. A client friend of mine had told me about this age-old method for whitening sheets where you laid them out on a grass lawn. Some sort of interaction with the chlorophyl in the grass would actually whiten yellowed sheets. I thought it all sounded a bit dubious but after researching it, I found out that grassing sheets were indeed a thing. Well, imagine my surprise when I opened up my assignment email this week to see this: "Cleaning Rugs With Snow." Goodness gracious… really? Well, once again with just a simple Google search, I found articles all about cleaning your rugs with snow! And this time, rather than just writing about it from research, I decided I'd give it a whirl myself. I found several articles about cleaning rugs with snow as well as some how-to videos. The one that seemed to have the most information about why this cleaning method is purported to work was "How to Clean a Rug With Snow" by Ashley Poskin at www.apartmenttherapy.com. I go to this site frequently because it always has lots of before and after renovation pieces along with photos. All my references focused on cleaning wool handwoven rugs. So, I grabbed a rolled-up 4x6 inch Oriental that I'd had in my storage room. The first thing you do is simply bring the rug outside and unroll it to bring its temperature to the same as outside. Don't put it directly in the snow until it's cooled or the warmth of the rug from being indoors might make the snow melt and cause your rug to absorb the moisture. You don't want that. Cooling the rug should only take about 30 minutes. Then, give the rug a few good shakes to release any of the loose dirt and fibers clinging to it. Next, lay the rug face-down in fresh, dry powdery snow. Again, a real sloppy wet snow might get it wet so you've got to wait for one of those really cold snowfalls where the snow is granular and moves about easily with a broom. Once face down, beat the rug with the flat side of the broom head. Over and over again. Wool rugs are generally tough as nails so you can really give it a good whomping. Pick the rug up and you'll see all kinds of dirt and debris the rug has deposited in the snow. Next, on a new patch of snow, flip it over so it's face up and beat it up some more. Then, sweep some snow right over the top of the surface of the rug so it's about one inch deep all over the rug's surface. Let it sit there for 15 minutes. According to the article, trace amounts of ammonia in the snow will react with the cold air and solidify any remaining dirt and debris in the rug which another beating will then release. So, sweep the snow off the rug, flip it back over so it's face down and give it a final beating with your broom. Then, shake it out again. Voila! You've got a naturally cleaned rug! Now, unless you've got a bunch of rug beater helpers standing by, you'll want to use this method for scatter rugs you can easily handle yourself. Wool rugs are heavy! And, do I really believe the whole ammonia chemical reaction with the cold thing? I'm not sure. I looked it up and indeed there are trace amounts of ammonia in snow but I'm not completely sold on it helping solidify dirt and debris. You do, however, get a certain amount of satisfaction with not only beating the snot out of your rug but you can also see all the grime that was in it clearly on the pure white snow. And just getting that old rug out into the cold air for an hour or so is going to help give it a fresher smell. I did find one article that thoroughly refuted the snow clean method and claimed it was an old myth. Of course, that article happened to appear on a cleaning service's website so there could be a little prejudice there. I could see their point though that snow cleaning isn't an effective way to get rid of stains and should be handled by a professional rug cleaner. And you sure do want to be careful not to get your rug sopping wet. In the meantime, we've unfortunately probably got a few more good storms coming to us before winter's end so set your sites now on those smaller Oriental rugs in your home and get ready for a magical snow carpet ride — or at least a great upper body workout!