Home Cleaning Guide for New Pet Parents

So, it’s your first time welcoming a pet into your home. Congratulations! Even if you’ve had family pets in the past, there’s something special about the first pet that’s all yours.  

At the same time, you might be concerned about the challenges of having a new pet, including how to keep your house clean. 

I get it — I was you just a few months ago.

Allow me to introduce myself: I’m the author of this blog and a new pet parent. A few months ago, my husband and I welcomed an eight-week-old border collie puppy into our home.  

And it’s been everything. Fun. Challenging. Rewarding. 

But most of all, an adventure. 

In spite of this, our house has stayed surprisingly clean. I credit our success to extensive research, a few smart moves, and the training I’ve done via my job at Stanley Steemer. 

To save you the research and offer the benefit of my experience, I put together my top tips for keeping your house clean while welcoming a new pet into your home. 

We have a very active puppy who loves going on outdoor adventures, as you can see in the picture above. To protect our house from the dirt and mud that comes with that, we use baby wipes on her paws before she even gets back in the car. If she’s been in a store or potentially stepped in something gross while on a walk, we’ll also use wipes before coming inside the house to keep those things from entering our home. 

When you’re purchasing wipes, try to avoid any that contain fragrances or dyes, as these ingredients can irritate your pet’s skin and paws. 

If you have an indoor-outdoor kitten, I recommend wiping their paws every time they come back inside since you won’t know what they stepped in while out and about without you. 

As a bonus, you can use these if your puppy or kitten has long fur and gets litter or feces stuck in their fur. That said, it’s extra important to get wipes without fragrances and dyes if you’re going to use them on more than just paws. 

2. Have a towel just for wiping water off paws

On rainy days, we use a towel to wipe her paws as soon as she enters the house. If her coat gets really wet, we also use the towel to wipe the rest of her body down.

3. Get a washable couch cover

This tip protects your couch in a variety of ways. If dirty paws get past your baby wipes and towel, dirt and mud will only be smeared on your couch cover rather than the couch. If the cover is waterproof, it will protect the couch from urine stains and drool. It also acts as a barrier for puppy baby shark teeth that always need something to chew.  

Another major benefit of having a couch cover is that dust, pollen, fur, and dander will settle on the cover, rather than deep in your couch fibers. This helps preserve the longevity of your upholstery and hopefully extends the time in between each professional upholstery cleaning. 

Truthfully, our couch cover is one of my favorite purchases. While my couch is still in great condition underneath the covering, the cover has definitely needed to be washed more than a few times. 

4. Roll up your rug during potty training or if your kitten is marking

Ultimately, your puppy will have accidents at the beginning of potty training. We didn’t have a rug when we got our puppy, but we kept her on our main floor, which didn’t have any carpet. If she needed to be in a room with carpet, we usually carried or held her until she understood where to use the bathroom, avoiding messes that could go deep into our carpet fibers. 

If you have rugs on your hard surface floors, consider rolling them up until potty training is well underway to avoid a lot of messes on the rug. 

Kittens typically take to their litter box almost immediately, but if your kitten is specifically marking your rug, consider rolling it up to avoid the marking trigger until you get the issue resolved.  

Spot cleaners can usually handle surface-level rug issues, but ultimately, a rug that gets peed on a lot will need to be professionally deep-cleaned. In some severe cases, the damage from unaddressed pet urine could make a rug uncleanable and require you to buy a new one. 

5. Gate your puppy off from having access to the entire house when you can't actively supervise them

We used baby gates like the one in this picture to section off our house and keep our puppy contained when we couldn’t keep an eye on her to prevent her from sneaking off to have potty accidents. We also puppy-proofed the rooms we left her in so she couldn’t destroy anything. In turn, this kept her safe from swallowing objects that wouldn’t digest or were poisonous and helped us avoid enormous vet bills.

6. Crate train your dog

While some people don’t like the idea of crating their dog, many dogs truly like their crates. It’s a safe space for them to calm down and have quiet alone time in a den-like atmosphere. Some breeds even need to be put in that den-like environment to get the sleep they need to grow into happy, healthy dogs. 

This is also super helpful to keep your puppy from being destructive when you can’t be at home. If you’re leaving your house for several hours, you definitely don’t want them to have free reign at first, especially if they have separation anxiety. This is dangerous for your house and for them, as their anxiety might lead them to destructive behavior that could hurt them as well. Even without separation anxiety, natural puppy curiosity can pose just as much risk. 

We were lucky that our puppy loved her crate from the beginning.  To this day, she energetically runs up the stairs to go in her crate when we tell her it’s time. And if she gets tired, she will stop at nothing to get my attention and point in the direction of her crate until I let her in for a nap.

That said, not every dog loves the crate as much as our puppy does. If you aren’t able to make the crate a positive experience for your dog, you could gate them off in a consistently puppy-proofed room or leave them in a puppy playpen to keep them and your home safe. 

7. Praise your dog for chewing the appropriate toys

Dogs ultimately want to please us, but they need us to teach them how to channel their instincts appropriately, like chewing. 

This is where hard plastic toys and bones come in. Make sure your dog has a lot of these types of toys that they can gnaw on safely, even if you’re not actively watching them. When you see your dog chewing the toy, praise them and let them know that this is a good thing to chew. If you see your dog chewing furniture or shoes, redirect the chewing to a plastic toy and praise your dog for making a good choice by switching. 

Over time, we were able to correct our puppy from a distance with a verbal cue because she would remember we praised her for chewing her toys. At her current age, we rarely, if ever, see her chewing something besides her hard plastic chew toys. 

8. Get your carpet/area rug professionally cleaned once your pet hasn’t had an accident for multiple weeks and you feel confident they're not going to have very many accidents moving forward

We recommend pet owners have their carpets cleaned every 3-6 months. Over time, fur and dander become embedded in carpets through shedding, and if your pet has accidents, bacteria will grow deep in the carpet fibers. 

By professionally cleaning your carpet and rugs, you’ll protect them from recurring odors and spots while reducing respiratory symptoms in those with allergies. 

Depending on your rug and availability based on location, we may recommend your rug go to one of our offsite facilities for the deepest cleaning available.

Call 1-800-STEEMER or visit our quote tool for a free carpet or rug cleaning quote + online scheduling!

9. Use Stanley Steemer spot cleaner on individual accidents

If you choose to keep your rug on the floor, or if your new pet has access to carpet, try to clean accidents with a spot cleaner and deodorizer ASAP. This will keep the surface of your carpet clean and mitigate the fast-spreading bacterial damage that comes from pet accidents.

Stanley Steemer has a spot cleaner and a deodorizer. These cleaners won’t get deep in the carpet fibers like professional cleaning, but they will mitigate the bacteria at the surface that tends to do the most damage if not treated right away. When it’s time for another professional cleaning, we’ll finish the job for you.  

We talk about how to best handle spot cleaning and a professional cleaning schedule in our blog about why you should have your carpet deep cleaned when you have a puppy. For more information, head on over there!

On a personal note, our puppy went into her first heat recently, and I used the Stanley Steemer spot cleaner on the blood stains on my area rug. I loved how easily the stain came up and how quick and easy the process felt. 

Whether you implement one, a few, or all of these tips, we hope they help you keep your house a little cleaner as you welcome your new pet. 

That said, we encourage you to be careful not to get so caught up in the logistics of having a pet that you forget to enjoy your pup or kitty. It’s such a fun and exciting time- make sure to soak it all in!