Is Baking Soda Safe to Vacuum?

Effective and inexpensive, baking soda can be used in so many different ways from cooking to cleaning, and is often used to absorb unpleasant odors. Thus, baking soda and other powder-based carpet fresheners are very popular products on today’s market. When sprinkled on carpet and vacuumed up, these products purportedly work by absorbing bad smells and often have added perfumes so as to leave behind a fresh fragrance on the rug and in the room. That’s great – except for....

1. The particles of baking soda are so small, that a portion of the product remains in the carpet fiber and/or sifts beneath the rug and padding to the floor below (never to be recovered!) Don’t believe me? If you use baking soda and one day rip up your carpeting, you’ll see a surprising amount of its residue left behind!   But, in essence, that’s exactly how the product executes its claim of freshening the rug because that indeed is where much of the product stays.

2. There is also a serious problem caused by the physical nature of Baking Soda’s micro-particles…they’re very sharp!!  The abrasive, “scrubby” texture of these grains work wonders on loosening grime or scrum from your dishes or bathtub. But left behind, buried deeply in your rug, the rough edges  slowly “saw-away” at the base of the fibers.  Walking over the rug exacerbates the situation.  This leads to the premature breakdown and thinning of your rugs. That’ll be expensive!

3.  Again, due to the small particle size of baking soda or freshener product, these can clog the pores of your vacuum’s bag or HEPA filter. This can drastically reduce suction resulting in poor cleaning performance and cause clogs to form.  Even worse, this dust can escape the filtration system in which your vacuum’s motor can “breathe” these particles and eventually short out.

This is not to just bash baking soda or Carpet Fresh; large quantities of any fine dust such as fireplace soot or sheetrock/construction dust is highly dangerous for almost any vacuum!