I'm a big fan of a TikTok cleaning hack, especially when they save me time and money. But not every product pushed on TikTok lives up to the hype, and some can even damage your home if you're not careful.
When I saw a video from @urdailydealfinder showing a simple scraping tool that picked up a carpet's-worth of pet hair in seconds, I was curious to see if this handy gadget was really that good. Plus, the ability to pick up hidden dust and pet hair from my carpets with one handy scraper seemed pretty satisfying, so I bought it for myself.
@urdailydealfinder ♬ original sound - Jessi | Amazon FindsDoes the carpet rake really work?
The TikTok-viral carpet rake is particularly loved by pet owners. It uses a fine copper coil to capture deep-rooted hairs and fibers, and has the added benefit of reviving any trodden-down bits of carpet before they become flat and matted.
It has a wooden handle that's comfy enough to hold, and it's super portable and easy to store in a cleaning caddy. Amazon even advertises that you can use it to remove lint and pet hair from clothing and upholstery.
Even as someone who doesn't own pets, I've found this handy tool amazing for reaching into little corners of my apartment where my vacuum won't reach. And even after vacuuming, it still finds debris that the brush head couldn't reach.
I don't have pets, but I still vacuum my carpet every other day because dust builds up so fast in my apartment it can feel hard to keep on top of it. I tested the carpet rake a day after vacuuming, brushing it over the top of the carpet on my landing, and was a bit horrified to find lines of dust and fine hairs building up almost instantly.
It only took a minute or so to build up a substantial clump of detritus from my carpets. Gross, but also pretty satisfying.
I actually think the major strength of this tool is around those edges and corners where even the best vacuum cleaner will struggle to reach. I often notice dust building up between my base boards and my carpets because my vacuum head doesn't quite reach there, so I almost instantly built up a thick line of deep-rooted dust when I used the carpet rake to reach into these corners.
It also came in really handy on the staircase, where my vacuum struggles to reach into the 90-degree angles of each step. So, if I had to sum it all up, I'd say it was worth the $7 investment.
More from Tom's Guide
- 5 surefire signs it's time to replace your vacuum cleaner
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- 9 things you should never vacuum but probably do