Join Britain's Greatest Clean Up today

Vanish, Dettol, Finish and Cilit Bang have launched a huge competition for one lucky winner to receive the services of a cleaner for free for an entire year alongside a huge stock of cleaning products to keep the house looking spick and span. Read on to find out how to enter and a few helpful tips on keeping your own house clean.

Britain's Greatest Clean-Up
Pride starts at home...with a clean home. Imagine how much easier it would be to keep the house ship shape if you had someone cleaning your house for free all year. It could free you up with the time to do those DIY jobs that you've been putting off or maybe redecorate a room or two.

To enter, simply take a humorous photo of yourself cleaning the house and then visit http://www.britainsgreatest.co.uk/competitions/win-a-cleaner/ to submit your entry.

Have a look at the Coupons page while you're there as they have a large selection of discount vouchers that you can print off straight from the page. The coupons give you money off on lots of leading household cleaning products. Let's have a look at how you could use certain products to tackle the task of keeping your house carpets clean.

Carpets - Cure
Carpets are really tough to keep clean. Not only do you have to worry about the daily build-up of dust but also the nasty stains that you can't plan for. Firstly, routine vacuuming and sweeping is a must. It's also worth getting a professional clean done once every couple of years to lengthen the life of the carpet. In between the deep cleans, you could use vacuum-up powders that draw dirt out of the fibres and neutralise bad odours.

If you do get any unsightly stains, you can use Vanish for carpets & upholstery to get rid of them. Vanish contains a special formula to loosen dirt and lift away stains. Just make sure you catch them as early as possible as dried in stains are much harder to get out of carpets than fresh ones. Even the tough tasks like tea stain removal are easy if you get to the stains immediately.

Prevention
They say prevention is better than a cure and that's certainly true when it comes to carpets. Here are a few ideas you could try to keep your carpet clean.

Buy a mat to place at each entrance to your house. Doing this will make sure a large proportion of dirt ends up in the mat rather than in your carpets.
Have a no shoes rule to ensure any external dirt is left in the entrance ways.
Try using a throw or a rug in areas of the carpet that are used regularly or areas more likely to get stained.