January 24th, 2006 - I love vinegar!
Once again, I’m singing the praises of Annie Berthold Bond’s Better Basics for the Home. This time, one of the carpet cleaning recipes, 50/50 vinegar and water. Put it in a spray bottle. Spritz the area (I made it pretty wet) and wait 10 minutes. Blot up the liquid with a clean cloth or sponge. Repeat if necessary. (I did 2-3 applications.)
Our dogs sometimes don’t eat their food. When they don’t, they are overly hungry before the next meal. And they end up throwing up the bile in the tummies, an icky nasty yellow/green liquid. Even if we wipe it up immediately and use the enzyme cleaner (specifically for pet issues), a yellow stain remains. I have some Resolve carpet cleaner that I’ve used, but it has some problems. First, I don’t want to use it when Maggie is around or will be around (they throw up in the living room, where she spends her time playing). So I try to only use it after she goes to bed, so there’s a good 13 hours before she’ll be in the area. The only problem is that the yellow can only be seen in sunlight! As we discovered last week when I was all ready to clean the stains. The lights in the LR didn’t work, nor did a flashlight. But come morning, they they are again. Sicne it’s winter, our daylight hours are limited to 8am - 5pm, which leaves little opportunity for cleaning it up (since I work and Maggie’s around all day).
The other problem is that the Resolve cleans so well that it leaves a white patch on the carpet. It might be bleaching the area. I did use it on one stain in the middle of the room. The white patch can still be seen a week later. :( AND, the Resolve did not get rid of the entire stain, so there’s a dark spot in the middle of the white.
So this weekend, I remembered Annie’s book and looked up carpet cleaning. We had four stains, two of them a couple weeks old. To be honest, I wasn’t sure any of her recipes would work on these tough stains. But I was ready to try every one she had with the hope I wouldn’t have to use more Resolve. It worked! It worked! It worked! The stains are gone! I was so delighted, I decided to try it out on a really old soda stain (it’s more than a year old, possibly two). NO MORE SODA STAIN EITHER!!!! I’d forgotten about some more stains in the den, and they will be attacked this weekend.
And the best part is that Maggie could be around during the cleaning process. I kept her away, since playing in vinegar really isn’t recommended. But I had no fears that she would find it while it was soaking and stick chemicals in her mouth. Same with the pets. I didn’t have to put guards around it while drying, either. Woohoo!!!!!
I purchased this book about a year ago (link to blog post), after reading it from the library. If I had to choose just one frugal/simple/organic living book to own, this would be it. (Indeed, the only other one I have is The Complete Tightwad Gazette. Which I also highly recommend!)