How to Clean Your Own Carpet

If you are like me and have a toddler and a preschooler in the house, your carpet probably needs cleaned pretty often. Or if you have pets, you too might have Stanley Steemer on speed dial. Hiring a professional carpet cleaner got kind of expensive for us. And renting a Rug Doctor every few months is just a good way to ruin a weekend.

We do still clean our carpet twice a year. But you'd never know it in a month or two. So for those in between times, when guests are coming over, or I'm hosting playgroup, or my mother in law is showing up, I've learned a few tricks on how to clean my carpets.

First of all, it is important to vacuum regularly. In my house, I vacuum every other day. It is recommended that you vacuum the entire carpet at least once a week.

For general stains, those ones that you didn't clean up right away and a week later is just a blob that you don't remember how it got there, use shaving cream. Apply shaving cream to the stain and let it sit about thirty minutes. Then blot it away with a clean cloth. Finally, rinse with a white vinegar and water solution. This gets rid of a lot of stains that I suspect are food or grease stains in our house.

To remove Silly Putty (and don't ask how I know about Silly Putty in the carpet) you will probably need Goo Gone. This stuff works great, and dissolves just about anything. I think it has a strong odor, so I use it when the children are napping or at least not in the same room. Rinse it up with white vinegar and water afterwards. If that didn't get it all, you can snip a few fibers with the scissors and voila, good as new. By the way, this trick works great on gum , too.

Mud stains are almost inevitable. If you have a dog, they aren't that good at wiping the paws before entering. And neither are my girls. Truthfully, neither am I. A good trick with mud is to let it dry completely before you mess with it. Otherwise, you are grinding that mud into the carpet fibers. Get a spoon or spatula and clean up the worst of the clumps, then let it dry. Put something over it like a chair if you are worried that the mud will get tracked onto even more carpet. Then vacuum the next day. You might have to use an attachment to get all of the mud, but it should come up. Rinse with white vinegar and water for any remaining residue.

Removing blood stains is tricky. I don't want to know why you need to clean blood off your carpet, and thankfully I have never had to, but I've gleaned a few tips over the years. Some people say that you can scrub blood stains with cold water, followed by a wash with warm water and Dawn dish soap if you get to the stain quickly enough. It is important to blot frequently to wick the stain out of the carpet fiber. Some people have had good results with club soda removing a blood stain. And I know people who swear by hydrogen peroxide. If you are going to use hydrogen peroxide, make sure your carpet is a light color, because the peroxide essentially bleaches the blood color out of the carpet fiber and will bleach any other color out of it, too.

Juice stains are tough. And they are especially tough if it's a nice red juice punch with lots of artificial coloring. Some juices I've gotten to come out of the carpet with white vinegar and water. Others I've had to follow that up with dish soap and hot water before it came clean. And one big red juice stain resisted all of my efforts, even the above trick with hydrogen peroxide. I think it finally just wore out of the carpet. I'd recommend buying only white grape juice for your children served in non-spill and non-leak sippy cups, personally.

If it sounds like most things come clean with white vinegar and warm water, it really does. It has been the best carpet cleaning tip I've ever gotten. And it's not expensive, either.

My carpet isn't perfectly clean these days, but by using these tips, I can usually tell what color it is supposed to be, even before the commercial carpet cleaner shows up.