Whenever you make any type of purchase for your home, the majority of the time you are going to want whatever you buy to last as long as possible.
This applies even more when you are buying any type of furnishing for your home because you will generally spend a bit of time looking for the right product to fit in with the rest of your style.
Furnishings will also generally be bought to enhance or add to the look of a room so you will want them to keep their quality for as long as you can.
When purchasing rugs, if you put a bit of time and effort into looking after them then you will ultimately get more use out of them and they will retain their quality for a much longer period of time.
A rug will generally be placed in areas of the house where there is quite a lot of traffic - in hallways, living rooms and bedrooms.
The result of this is that it will be at an increased risk of spillages, crumbs and walked in dirt, all of which will clearly harm the rug.
So, what should you be doing to help prolong the life of your new purchase? A lot of it all comes down to using a bit of common sense as well as keeping up with a regular cleaning schedule.
Far and away the best form of protection is prevention.
If you can stop the numerous causes of stains and dirt from getting onto your rug then you have solved half of the problem.
This is easily done by employing a few basic ground rules.
For a start, there should be no shoes on the rug.
Shoes can pick up a large amount of dirt that can transfer to the carpet but they can also get stones and bits of glass stuck in them.
Walking on a rug with a sharp stone or shard of glass stuck on the sole of your shoe could very easily damage the fibres that make up the carpet, by getting people to remove their shoes you will eliminate that possibility.
The other major occurrence is spillages, if possible you should try to keep any liquids or anything else that could stain as far from the rug as you can.
However, if something is spilt then it is vitally important that it is dealt with immediately.
Leaving anything on the surface will give it time to settle deep into the bottom layers which will make it much more difficult or even impossible to remove.
When something is spilt, don't rub it as this can make things worse, it should be patted and treated with stain remover if necessary.
As well as trying to prevent the above from happening, you also need to clean your rug regularly.
You should try to do this as often as possible by taking it outside and giving it a good shake to remove the larger bits that have accumulated.
Once it has been shaken off you should run a vacuum cleaner over it to remove the smaller dirt particles.
Doing this once every couple of weeks will help keep your rugs in top condition.