Power Carpet Shampooing

I like clean carpets.

When we bought our condo/townhome (friggin’ weird combo), we paid a little extra for higher quality, dense carpet. Yay for us.

Then came Cassandra and her two pets. A cat named Caesar and a dog named Sampson (or as we call him, “Sammy”). Along with the pets, came dirt… and lots of it.

No one that lives in our home has any Asian heritage, but the moment we walk in from outside, our shoes come off. This is in an attempt to avoid grinding dirt into our, oh so lovely, carpet.

Well… the animals don’t participate in our “save the carpet” campaign, and grind their dirty paws throughout the house.

Now yes, we humans share half the blame. Even socks get gross and track dirt throughout the house. And yes, high traffic areas will accumulate dirt no matter what you do (unless you get an area rug… so IT can get messed up instead).

So, as part of our home improvement weekend… I’m shampooing our carpets. Thoroughly!

In the past, before Sammy’s paw became a leaking appendage, I took the time (5 days to be exact, 15 or so hours) to shampoo ONE ROOM; the common area. It took that long to shampoo the carpet, shampoo it again, then shampoo it again, and so on and on for over 15 hours.

But… in the end… the carpet was beautiful. It almost looked new (almost). In exchange, I wasted (did I mention) 15 plus hours of my life!

As you can imagine, I was not looking forward to another epic adventure with our Hoover.

So… I went to Walmart.

I picked up some Woolite “Heavy Traffic Carpet Foam” and went to work. I bought 5 cans and used ALL OF THEM on a room approximately 155 sq. ft. (I know, I’m sick)

First, I pre-rinsed the carpet with a few passes from the Hoover SteamVac. Then, I laid on the Woolite… HEAVY. Once the room stopped looking like winter in Michigan (try it, you’ll see), I let it do its thing.

I felt like I was in a library being too loud. The hiss was ridiculously loud. All that foam effervescing and ripping apart that nasty ground in dirt. (Monk would be proud)

A few more passes with the carpet shampooer, and TA DA… clean carpet. It was beautiful (I’d like to thank the Academy).

The moral of the story?

When looking to clean your carpets, use a professional. If you don’t want to pay for that (like me), by an inordinate number of Woolite “Heavy Traffic Carpet Cleaner” and lay into that nasty room. It saved me tons of time, and it will you too!

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