Bringing Life Back to Our White Carpet

A few weeks ago, Eric and I made a big decision to not go on vacation this summer.  We decided that we'd rather have a stay-cation and work on projects around our house for fun.  This decision was a little tough at first because Eric had enough airline miles to get us to San Francisco (which is where we thought about going), but not back.  As soon as we both agreed to just stay home for the summer, we began looking online to see what we could use his points on.  We looked at getting lots of different things, but we ended up getting a "Little Giant" ladder, a Black & Decker hedge trimmer, and a "Hoover Max Extract 60" Steam Cleaner.  We were so excited when we saw these items arrive on our doorstep last week.

Yesterday was the first chance that we really had to open up the boxes and try out our new toys.

Before we dive too far into this post, let us tell you a little bit about why we bought the steam cleaner.  We have white carpet in our family room, living room, dining room, basement (as well as on the basement stairs), upstairs hallway (as well as on our stairs going to the second floor), and in one of our guest bedrooms.  When we moved in, there were a couple of stains on the family room carpet, as well as on the living room/dining room carpet.  White carpet to us is extremely dangerous.  It means noticeable dirt in high traffic areas.  We have a dog, who as a puppy had accidents inside and has thrown up on our carpet a hand full of times, which immediately makes the white carpet a problem for us.  We also plan on having children in the near future, which means spit up stains or other bodily fluid stains.  If it were up to us, we'd completely get rid of the white carpet in all of these rooms ASAP.  However, that is a project for another time and a larger bank account.  For now, we must live with the white carpet, so why not make it look as clean as possible?  Here's where the steam cleaner comes into play.

Last night we tried out this sucker (pun intended).  We steam cleaned a very small section of our family room carpet just to see if there was a noticeable before and after difference.  Lo and behold, there was quite a difference!

As you can see from the above picture, our white carpet started to get even whiter.  We passed over this section quite a few times, letting the steam cleaner rinse, scrub, and suck up dirt.  We were amazed at the difference!  Not only did it make our carpet look whiter, it also got rid of our stains.  Hooray! We have yet to finish steam cleaning the rest of the carpet, but I will keep you posted on what the whole family room space looks like afterward.  We now feel a little bit better about having our white carpets.  It's nice to know that we have a way to deep clean them in case of serious spills or messes.

Have you invested in a steam cleaner?  Do you love or loathe yours?  We rather like ours and would highly recommend it to those looking for one. :)