Steam Cleaning=Cheery Carpets=Happy Me

I’ve mentioned before that I am a bit obsessed about my carpet, and for the past two days my obsession was having a heyday.  A sassyclassymommy friend (LS) let me borrow her carpet steam cleaner!!
And this is how we’ve been living the last two days…




As I have been sucking up this…


From this… (The Before. Believe me—it’s dirty)

(and seven other rooms)

To get this… (The After. Believe me—there’s a difference)

But, me being me, and just a bit obsessed, I not only did the rooms once, but twice. I have a blister on my right hand.  Each time I had to turn the vacuum off to dump the brown water, my boys would ask, “Are you done now?”, or they would come in from the backyard and say, “You are still doing that!” 
At least they enjoyed having all the furniture in one area to climb over to get to the table to eat.  After about the fifteenth time I turned off the vacuum, they asked, “Are you done now?” I answered yes.  “Can we walk on the carpet now?” I answered yes. “Woo-hoo,” they exclaimed as they ran onto my pristine carpet and proceeded to chase each other in circles.

I got to enjoy the super-duper sunshine lines for a minute.  My carpet does look very happy now.  I realized the last time I steam cleaned my carpets was almost exactly one year ago.  I was nine months pregnant.  Looking back, I can see why I went into labor two weeks early.

So, here is hopefully some helpful information should you decide to kick off your spring cleaning with giving your carpets a face-lift.



This is the vac I used.  My friend did lots of research before she bought this pup.  The Hoover SpinScrub SteamVac had the best consumer rating, plus it was on sale at Wal-Mart.  I must add that this vac out performed the previous steam cleaners I have used before. Were I to buy one of my own (which I am) I would buy this one.



This is the cleaner I used the first time.  I love this product for spot cleaning and it says on the back that it can be used with carpet cleaning machines, so I gave it a whirl.  It again lived up to the magic.  Only not so fab thing is that it is odor-less, and for all the work I was doing, I wanted something to “smell” for it. So….



I used this cleaner for the second time.  I must admit that a few of the smaller, less dirty rooms, I used only this, and it appeared to clean just as well.  The fragrance is so lovely too. (I’m big on smells…the good kind.) Oh, and this is the cleaner my friend used also.

If you are daring enough, or obsessed enough (like me) you can try for those really stubborn areas that are just not getting clean enough spraying a little bleach water on it, then going back over with the steam vac.  I tried it. It worked. I do have quite light carpet, so I wouldn’t recommend it for those with darker shades.
One more interesting tidbit I learned while researching carpet cleaning: Don’t use chemical cleaners to clean up vomit.  Something about the acid in the puke mixes with the chemicals in the cleaner and causes a bad reaction and bleaches it out.  Wish I knew this two weeks ago, when I tried cleaning up my son’s vomit and noticed when I was all done that that particular section of my carpet was distinctly lighter the the rest…and I didn’t use bleach. I just thought the rest of my carpet was horridly dirty. It was dirty, just not horridly.  My efforts from the last two days have helped it all blend well though.

Now, I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow I’m doing the tile.

Nighty-night.