Pin Ups- Carpeting Cleaning

My baby brother had 3 life changing events last week. Here's how his week went:

Sunday-  He graduated college (as valedictorian!) and sang at his graduation.

Friday- He bought a house, moved some items into said house, and had his wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Saturday- He got married and left on his honeymoon.

What does that have to do with carpet cleanings you might ask? Or Pin ups for that matter. Well, you see his new house needed the carpets cleaned. There was a rush of things going on right before closing and the house never got thoroughly cleaned. Well, since they were off on their honeymoon and family was going to start moving things in for them, I decided to clean their carpets for them. I have a carpet cleaner that I used religiously at our old house. LOVE IT. Highly recommend it. In case you wanna get your own this is what I have, the Hoover SteamVac with Clean Surge.

Yep, it's a mini miracle worker on light colored carpets...and thats just what my brother and his bride had. Very light cream colored carpets. You can use whatever type solution in the Hoover SteamVac that you want and normally I use the Hoover brand carpet cleaning solutions that I pick up for around $10-$12 at Lowes, and that stuff would last me forever. Well, I didn't have enough left to do their whole house, so I stopped by Lowes and all they had was this stuff in the red bottle. I figured it would work just as well.

The next day, I went to take everything over there and I realized I didn't have any carpet spot treatment. I didn't feel like stopping by the store, so instead I turned to pinterest. To a pin up, I had made, where  I had read about people using homemade cleaners that changed their whole lives....well ok, maybe their whole lives is a bit of exaggeration...anyhow, I found this pin with this really horrible looking "Before" picture (You can see the picture and their recipe HERE) with a really good looking "After" picture and decided to give it a try.

I based my "recipe" off theirs with a bit of alterations. 

Here's what I did:

2 Cups of Water

2 Tbsps of White Vinegar

1 Tbsp of Dawn Direct (it's the only clear detergent I had)

I poured all that into an empty spray bottle I had. I then gently tilted the bottle around to mix everything without creating bubbles. Now it was ready to go....

Here's the carpets before we started out:

We started by first vacuuming the carpets with our Dyson. If you don't have a Dyson, you don't have fun vacuuming. We have the Dyson DC24 Compact Vacuum. I love it. I don't think it's available anymore though.

Next, DH went around and spray all the really dark spots with our homemade carpet solution. Some of the spots that had caked on gunk we scrubbed with fancy microfiber washcloths old cut up undershirts of DHs.

I then loaded up cleaning solution into my trusty Hoover and went at it. Some of the really bad spots, I used the Power Surge button on....which means the machine releases extra cleaning solution in those spots. I don't know if all machines have that but this one does. For normal use though, you just hold a trigger on the handle and push forward. Then release the handle trigger and pull the machine backwards and it will start sucking the water and solution back up. What that machine with suck up will be NASTY. NAS-TAY, I tell you. You will not believe what all will come out of your carpets. Anyhow, I went over the carpets twice since we weren't sure just how long they had been dirty.

And here's the before and afters:

 

I'd say the combo of the homemade solution and the Hoover SteamVac worked some magic on these carpets. Would I use the homemade cleaner again? Yup, in a pinch I definitely would. You had to scrub a bit more than if you had used Spot Shot, but overall it worked really well....and was cheap! Would I use the Hoover SteamVac again....you bet....thats like the 50th time I've used that sucker and each time I am amazed by the results.

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