Although we thought we'd read the proverbial book on green carpet cleaning, we know that spray on solutions don't always cut it. Instead of spending your afternoon on your hands and knees trying to scrub out set-in stains, preheat your iron instead. Yup, that's right—your iron!
The tech and household tip blog Lifehacker recently offered a suggestion from a reader that came straight from a professional carpet steam cleaner — which is money in the bank as far as we're concerned!
Instead of scrubbing your set in stains, try spraying a mixture of 1/4 white vinegar and 3/4 water over the stain in question. Next place a clean, terry towel over the top and with a hot iron set to the highest level of steam, iron the stain right out. That's all there is to it!
The method would give you a larger amount of concentrated steam and heat that you wouldn't get from a portable home steam cleaner. The vinegar keeps things clean and makes sure you don't remove any color from your carpets as well. Although it's been untested (by us personally), this method would also work on upholstery. We suggest testing on a small unseen area first to make sure your fabric can take the heat!
Do you have a tried and true cleaning method you'd like to share with us? Make sure to drop us a line and let us know!
Related: Homekeeping: Keeping Your Rug Clean
Via Lifehacker.
(Image: Flickr member It's Greg licensed for use by Creative Commons)
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defintely test this, most carpeting is synthetic and will melt at high heat
no it wont! I have the worlds cheapest synthetic carpet in my apartment and this works WONDERS. After I spilled a half a glass of dreaded red-drink (in this case, fruit punch crystal lite) on the carpet and used every cleaner in the house to no avail, I googled and I guess this has been a mom with kids who like kool-aid tip for years, only the recipe I heard and use is a squirt of dish soap (not sure why but it said it had to be dawn dish soap. More surfactants than hand soap and things alike I suppose) in a bowl of warm water and saturate the capret over the stain. Clean towel and and iron on top. I kept the iron moving and maybe a minute later, the impossible to remove dye was flat GONE.
The iron trick works wonders with paper towel (some use newspaper) on top a spilled candle on your carpet as well. We had a similar red candle knocked on the carpet incident and it sucked it up like you wouldn't believe. No trace left behind!
this is super cool...need to try on my tea stains...
Will this work on wool carpets?, I have a pure wool carpet with a few coffee stains. I'm a bit afraid of the heat with the wool...
I just did this at home, per this post & it was amazing. Stain gone! YES!
I just tried this on a eye shadow stain (thanx to my 2 yr old) and it didn't work. Any other suggestions on how to get eye shadow out of carpet would be very helpful.
response to Jmorri26.......SYNTHETIC CARPET WILL INDEED MELT AT HIGH TEMP.
Synthetic carpet has been known to show melt spots if a castered desk chair rolls over it too quickly........from a commercial designer who knows first hand!
I know that some carpets melt-I've done it. When I was about 8 I was too lazy to pull out the ironing board and decided to iron something on my bedroom floor. I noticed a dark, shiny spot in the carpet later that day. Upon touching the carpet I realized that the fibers had hardened and were become fused together. Always test first.
I have cheap, synthetic carpet and this trick worked great for me. One batch of stains was from a dog we fostered over a year ago. The other was from where liquid laundry detergent dripped as I measured and poured. Both stains are barely noticeable now!
I tried this tonight and it did work. It was not quick and took a lot of time and patience but I did get out a very stubborn paint stain (kids water color paint) from the carpet. I have more spots to tackle tomorrow!