When someone says Hinsdale, I smile. It’s a special town. Beautifully laid out with fully mature trees, a pool and a vibrant downtown where I can rarely find a place to park when I see Tony my barber on 32 Hinsdale Ave.

The Park District goes out of its way to design the flowerbeds that flourish on almost every street corner. I love my flowers and care for them too, but my flower beds never come close to those put in by the village.

Their master gardener is without equal. Their eye for combining colors and textures is amazing. When I rush by on foot for some business, I admire their handiwork and tell myself I must contact the person responsible and tell them how much I appreciate their skill. I’m not sure how they do it. Some people are just gifted that way. I’m not. I wonder if they’d consider doing some side work for me.

The lots in Hinsdale are not as wide as some of the surrounding communities so as a rule their houses go up instead of out. There is often a basement and sometimes a third-floor loft or spare bedroom. That means stairs and lots of them.

The stairs funnel the traffic of the entire house into a narrow walkway concentration wear and tear and soil in a very small area.

I heard a bit of wisdom on carpeted staircases and selling your home. When you get new carpeting, get extra to do the stairs twice. Take the extra stuff and put it somewhere cool and dry but not especially rolled up tight so light and air can’t get to it. When you finally get ready to sell your home bring out the spare carpet and have a good rug installer like my friend Dave put it in.

The reason you want the spare stuff is dye lots change, and you will never match the original color you put in. On top of that if you’ve allowed air and light to be around your spare goods they will have oxidized it some, and it will closely match what you already put down.

When prospective buyers tour your home, and their eyes instinctively go to the stairwell, they will see bright, fresh and appealing carpets and say to each other, “if the stair looks this good I know the rest of the house will be fine.”   You’ll get more money; your home will sell faster, and your buyers will be thrilled instead of beating you up for carpet replacement money.

Often they won’t replace it anyway. I mentioned this to one couple we were cleaning for, and they laughed and told me, “We told the seller we wanted carpet replacement money fifteen years ago and we never replaced it.”

As long as we’re on the subject of carpet cleaning I’ll take the time to say here that we are excellent carpet cleaners. We scrub on our hands and knees. Go over the stair two or three times and give you quick dry times.

Something else that separates us from other cleaners; we know we’re human. We also know the gravy Uncle Ernie spilled in the dining room at Thanksgiving, the coffee with cream your husband spilled next to the nightstand or the red wine that appeared after your dinner party but no one fessed up to can murder to try and take out.

We clean; it looks good but then comes back in a day or three. Sometimes it’s almost like a magnet. I just cleaned my own steps and two days later my youngest son dripped latte on my virgin steps.

We’re human. Try as we might some stains are not coming out. Someone just called me and said their daughter had spilled red nail polish on their white rug.   Could we get it out? Maybe. But if we don’t they’re gonna be upset at the bill. I gave them the number for our carpet repair guy. He’ll get it out 100% guarantee.

We’ve also been around for 40+ years, so we know something about stains and how they sometimes come back. We tell all our clients this might happen and when it does we got them covered. Just give us a call within 7 days, and we’ll come back can touch things up at no charge. We’ll come back cheerfully because you took us at our word.

We told this to a guy, and he called us and we came back and touched things up, and he was flabbergasted. “Why are you so surprised sir? We told you we’d come back and we did. What’s the big deal?”

“You said it, but I didn’t think you meant it.”

“Well, we mean it, sir.”

That’s who we are. We deal in honesty and integrity and fairness and we only ask if something is not right you call us within 7 days so we can come back and make things right. Some people have a problem with confrontation and would rather switch to a new cleaner than tell us they want us to come back. From my experience, the homeowners of Hinsdale are not afflicted with this problem. They have no problem telling people if they are happy or not. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Till next time best day ever!

– Jimmy.

Hinsdale Testimonial

My Name is Silvia S. from Hinsdale. I’d like to share with you what Beyond Carpet Cleaning has done for me and my family. Recently we bought a new to us older home in town with a mother in law section on the first floor. It was a dream come true to have our mom stay with us and still have her own space. What was not a dream come true was the condition of the carpets. A contractor in the area had build the home for himself so it had a lot of very nice features but in fifteen years he had never once cleaned the carpets. For what we paid for this house replacing all the carpets would have been impossible. There was a lot of carpet and all of it trashed. I had read Jimmy’s reviews and really didn’t think anyone could do with the carpets but thought, “what have i got to lose?”

He spend a lot of time just going over the house and asking questions. He was funny when he told me he wanted to start cleaning right away because he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night thinking about cleaning the carpets. I was on my lunch break so i couldn’t let him clean that day. The next week he brought in something special ordered from somewhere and he and his son started. My sister came by six hours later and they were still at it.

They finished the job and assured me that some of the spots would probably come back but they would come back too. I could not believe my eyes. This carpet looked new, even the stairs and they were really bad. I called him a few days later and he came over and touched up a few spot along the edges. He really did perform the miracles he promised. I am very pleased with his work.

– Silvia S.