How to Keep Your Home Separate from the Barnyard

If you live on a farm, chances are you're familiar with the struggle of keeping the contents of the paddock from making its way indoors - especially when there are pets involved.

As a family who lives a rural lifestyle, often the variety of pets you home may extend beyond a cat or dog. From chicken coops to children with pet lambs, there's a lot of fur, mud, feathers and dust involved.

This can create a myriad of cleaning challenges, and can make keeping your home clean and tidy seem like Mission Impossible on the best of days. Not to worry - we've done the research and put together a guide to help you stay on top of your farmhouse cleanliness and keep your home separate from the barnyard.

A little preparation goes a long way

When it comes to keeping your home and carpets safe from the farm animals outdoors, a few preventative measures can make a world of difference.

Create barriers between the indoors and outdoors

Making sure there's a clear distinction between your living space and the outdoors should be the first step you take to ensure cleanliness indoors. There are two ways we'd recommend doing this:

• Use a garage or wash room as a buffer between the farm and your carpets. If your family members are working with pets or farm animals day in and day out, chances are they're as responsible for the mud on the floor as your animals are. Setting up a wash station in your garage for your family to take off their muddy boots and wash their hands will eliminate a lot of animal fur and mud before it even reaches your carpet.
• Give your animals an outdoor home. If you can keep your animals outdoors as much as possible, this will significantly reduce the build up of fur and mud in your carpet. If you have farm dogs, setting up kennels outside is a great idea, or even restricting your pets to one room in the house will help to contain the mess.

Use mats (and lots of them)

Place mats at all of your entrances - on both sides of the door. Farms can get extremely dusty when animals are all around, and having mats will prevent that dust from travelling indoors. They'll also give your family members who have been out on the farm during the day an opportunity to get rid of any excess mud and dirt.

Keep your pets groomed

If you have farm dogs, you'll know how much they love to roll in the nearest thing that smells bad - and that odour will quickly make it's way indoors if you don't stay on top of your pet's grooming. Not to mention the shedding of fur. Make sure you brush and bath your animals regularly, and you'll be able to stay on top of your farmhouse cleanliness before it becomes a bigger issue. Your pets will thank you for it too!

How to clean a farm-fiasco

Even after you take all of the recommended preventative measures, there's always the chance that accidents will happen. If you find your barnyard pet problems are still making their way onto your carpets, there are some easy ways to tackle it.

Muddy Paws

If you're finding muddy paw prints trudged through your home on your brand new carpet, you'll need to use the Spot Remover spray. If the mud is dry, vacuum up any excess dirt first, then spray the Spot Remover on the affected area following the steps on the bottle's instruction label. Make sure to clean from the centre of the stain, so not to spread the mud. It's designed for use on heavy duty stains that can be tough to remove, and doesn't require a full Rug Doctor machine hire - perfect for daily mishaps.

Animal Accidents

When you're working with animals on a daily basis, it's inevitable at some point they'll have an accident of the doggy-doo or cat-pee variety. The best way to combat this, is with the Stain Remover spray.

Act quickly to ensure that any acid (urine) stains don't cause bleaching and apply the Stain Remover to the affected spot.

Unfortunately, these types of accidents can leave behind a pesky odour that's difficult to get rid of. For this reason, we recommend using the Odour Remover spray post-clean. This will deodourise, disinfect and kill germs, removing any trace of odour from your carpets.

For a step-by-step guide on how to remove pet stains, we've put together this helpful guide: Quick-Fire Ways to Remove Pesky Pet Stains.

Fur and Feathers

One of the most common cleanliness issues associated with having plenty of pets is an excess of fur and feathers dispersed throughout your carpets and rugs. This can be particularly problematic if you have kids with allergies.

Did you know - it's recommended that a home with pets undergoes a thorough carpet clean every six months.

As you know, a home with farm animals builds up dirt, dust and fur at an even quicker rate, so naturally it's recommended to be deep-cleaned even more frequently. The damaging effects of dirt, grit and grime to your beautiful carpet is something that you don’t always see. Grit wears away and cuts at carpet fibres as they are walked on, and this is accelerated when plenty of pets are involved.

A Rug Doctor full carpet clean is perfect for the job.

The Rug Doctor machine in combination with the unique vibrating brush that agitates the carpet fibres, will effectively remove dirt, pet fur and stains that are lurking in your carpet.

The best news is, Rug Doctor is pet safe - just make sure your pets are kept outside while the carpets are drying.

If you've got a farmhouse that needs a little TLC, and carpets housing a pet stain or two, download our FREE pet stain removal guide to get you started.

Make sure to also check out our Ultimate Guide to Owning a Pet: Everything you need to know