How to Clean Your Carpet

When we moved into our house we were a newly engaged couple with no pets, no kids and, aside from a new mortgage, no responsibilities.

We dove whole-heartedly into making the fugly 20 year old home “ours”.  We redid the fireplace, landscaped the backyard and ripped up the flooring.  In place of knotty pine looking Pergo we had off-white Berber carpet laid.  It was soft, and pretty and OH SO CLEAN.

We were fucking idiots.  Because six years, a cat, a 110 lb. dog and two sons later, that beautiful carpet looks as if a traveling band of gypsies camped out in our living room.  While giving birth.  And mining for coal.

Believe me when is say it’s not pretty.

In an effort to “save money” a few years back, I invested in a steam cleaner.  I mean, it seemed like that would be cheaper in the long run than having a professional carpet cleaning company coming out regularly to do the same job.

Little did I know that steam cleaning your carpet is HARD.  First you have to VACUUM.  That’s, like, an entire extra step.  AND you have to pick up all the crap on the floor, AND you have to even MOVE FURNITURE.  And getting the damn steam cleaner in from your packed and cluttered garage is a feat all it’s own.

I’d do it on occasion, but really only when people were coming over that I felt needed to think I do a semi-decent job of keeping house.  You know, people like my mother.  Or maybe Oprah.

Then the other night I was performing a Rachael Ray type feat of getting AS MUCH as possible into the kitchen in one trip.  And in an effort to keep the baby from drinking spilling my wine in my absence, I picked it up to  take it with me.

And then the dinner plates that were stacked precariously atop the baby’s booster tray began to teeter.  The next moments are a blur, but I somehow managed to keep the plates from spilling onto my carpet.  Sadly, I wasn’t as successful with my partially full glass of red wine.  SIGH.

I tried club soda.  It seemed to work.  Until the next morning when I walked into the living room and was met with an ugly reddish-purple stain.  So I did what I loathe.  I broke out the steam cleaner, got down on my hands and knees and SPOT CLEANED the carpet.

But sadly that didn’t really work either.

So now we’re doing what any logical couple would do when faced with a stained carpet.

We’re ripping it up and replacing it with hardwood.

And I’m going to invest in a ShamWow or two.