Rug cleaning in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre

The rug market

The town organises its flea markets by district rather than as a permanent market: quartier du Centre, Sainte-Alix, Montgomery-Gribaumont, each on one day in the year, to which are added the two Stockel fairs on the place Dumon (Ascension week and the week of 15 August) and the Stockel street sales in spring and autumn. Here an oriental rug is not picked up at a market: it comes out of a house, on the occasion of a move or an estate.

A rug bought second-hand rarely arrives clean: mechanical dusting takes out of it what no domestic vacuum cleaner will go and find.

Damp and water

The Woluwe originally wound through a marshy valley before being straightened and largely culverted. The sewers, although oversized six times over, see flows exceed their capacity by up to twenty times during heavy rain, and the permanent wetlands cause groundwater problems that call for continuous pumping under some buildings. After the heavy rain on the night of 1 August 2024, the town brought its residents together on 10 September 2024 with Vivaqua on how the sewers and storm basins work.

That is exactly the setting in which wool starts to smell: stagnant damp, a rolled-up rug, darkness. Washing settles the smell, the way it is stored stops it coming back.

Who lives here

Woluwe-Saint-Pierre records the highest equivalised median income in the Brussels Region: €21,221 (2019 tax year), or 34% above the regional median, and a median net taxable income of €31,645 in 2023. 38% of the population is of foreign nationality (2022), led by the French (2,620), Italians (1,529), Spaniards (1,308) and Germans (1,142).

Dogs, children, entertaining, house shares: it is the way people live here that decides how often a rug is washed, not a theoretical calendar.