Whether your kids have tracked in sand inside the house in their shoes after a day at the beach or a bucket of sand inadvertently ended up dumped on your living room carpet, you have probably discovered that it is pretty hard to get sand out of carpet, although it will seem to always stick to the bottoms of your bare feet and then track into other parts of the house and make even your hardwood or tile floors seem gritty right after washing. But how to get it out?
First, if the carpet is small enough, the easiest thing to do is carefully roll up the carpet or rug and carry it outside. Place it over a railing if possible, then beat it with something hard, like a broom handle, to shake all the sand loose. Be careful you don’t get sand in your eyes, if it is a bit breezy outside, wear safety glasses or even sunglasses to prevent it.
If the area of sand is very small, you can also use the nozzle attachment of your vacuum and suck up the sand that way. It will take patience if the area is larger than a dinner plate size though.
What if the carpet is too large to take outside, or it is attached to the subfloor? You will need to have a strong vacuum for the job. You want to lower the height of the vacuum as low as possible – this will bring the vacuum’s suction power as close to the sand as possible. If your vacuum adjusts the height automatically, you will need to manually override the height in order to drop the height, since the sensors only automatically adjust depending on your carpet’s height.
Then start vacuuming it up! Do keep in mind that this can make it pretty hard to push the vacuum across the carpet, especially for higher pile carpeting. Once you have finished vacuuming the sand, don’t forget to change the height, since it increases the wear and tear from the vacuum on your carpet.
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