Yes, You Should Buy a Pet Hair Eraser® Vacuum – Even if You Don’t Own a Pet
Don’t let names like “FurFinder™,” “Pet Pro,” and “Pet Hair Eraser®” make you think pet-approved products can’t clean up after people, too.
Pet messes are the gold standard of household messes because they are the absolute hardest to clean, according to Adam Brown, BISSELL Director, Pet Performance Engineering. Here, he explains how Pet Proven® certified products are engineered to deliver peak cleaning performance, making the gold Pet Proven® badge something pet parents and pet-free shoppers should look for.
Pet messes really are the toughest to clean
No matter how messy your child or partner, they’re probably tidier than the average pet.
Cats scatter litter and kibble, dogs drool and track in mud, and both embed fur into soft surfaces throughout a home. And that’s just an average day of pet mess-making. There are also hairballs, potty training mishaps, and other cleaning challenges that – when not properly removed – can leave lasting stains and odors.
BISSELL tests its products on a variety of manmade and pet-produced messes to ensure products clean as promised. Brush rolls, suction power, and formulas are challenged to clean substances including human hair, cereal, and various sauces and syrups. But the sticky, stinky situations pets create are the most extreme messes our machines face, in the lab or at home.
For example, pet parents have told us that cat urine is one of the most offensive and stubborn smells to try and remove. “We know from studies and our own insights that male cat urine is many times greater in pungency compared to female cat urine,” says Adam. “So, we account for this biological reality when we source our cat urine used for odor sensory testing to be sure it represents what our consumers experience.“
Pet parents say cat urine is one of the most offensive and stubborn smells to try and remove, so we source real cat urine for product testing to ensure our products can remove it.
Every home has fur, trails, and yuck messes
Cat urine isn’t the only mess pet parents want help with. We surveyed 7,500 customers and homed in on 65 unique cleaning jobs pet owners commonly face. Many of these had some common characteristics, says Adam, so the Pet Proven® certification criteria groups messes into three main cleaning challenges – fur, trails, and yuck.
When we talk about “fur” messes, we mean pet hair and fur as well as pet dander and dander allergens. Pet “trails” tend to be a mix of dry and wet messes, from tracked-in dirt and mud to dried-on cat food. “Yuck” messes are ones that require deep cleaning, such as a rug that’s been soiled and could benefit from a thorough wash.
These terms are pet specific, and refer to particularly stubborn mess types, but it’s easy to see how they translate to powerfully removing everyday messes, too. Products that expertly pick up fur also capture pollen, dirt, and crumbs. Though designed to masterfully remove tough pet trails, a CrossWave® wet dry vac doesn’t discriminate against spilled soda or dried-on batter. And pet parents who bought a Little Green® portable carpet cleaner for puppy cleanup don’t think twice about using the machine on other household stains once potty training is over.
“Many of our Little Green® Machine deep cleaners are Pet Proven® certified to expertly remove common pet messes including urine, vomit, and blood,” says Adam. “But these same products also excel at removing grease and oil-based food spills in a living space. So, we've definitely engineered our Pet Proven® products to not only be good with pet messes, but also a wide variety of human messes.”
No matter how messy your child or partner, they’re probably tidier than the average pet.
Pet Proven® certified: better cleaning made easier
People and pets leave muddy footprints. But, while you might make a single trip out, a dog could come and go dozens of times each day – walking into various rooms, jumping on different pieces of furniture, and tracking in grass and other bits of debris. This volume of mess-making is the other reason pets and their messes are considered the ultimate cleanup challenge.
“We talk about pet messes as the gold standard because we have to have much better performing products to handle the variety and the frequency of messes,” says Adam. “So, we really elevate our Pet Proven® products to the highest standard of performance.”
Pet Proven® certified products come with a gold badge to show that they really are best-in-class at cleaning the toughest messes. And while those are often pet messes, the cleaning power of Pet Proven® certified products translates across mess types.
“I've lived in a household with multiple kids and pets,” says Adam. “It’s very challenging, and the difference is that the people can clean up after themselves, but the pets can't. Many of our consumers have this challenge – there's a lot going on at home. So, you have to have really good products to not just keep up, but keep up quickly because people don't have time to go over and over hair on upholstery or boot prints on the carpet. People really want one stroke over something and it's gone. And that is the gold standard that we strive for with Pet Proven® products.”