Nicola's Baby Blog

Shampooing our Carpet

As I type, Stephen is shampooing our basement carpet with a carpet-cleaning machine that I rented from the store where I work.  We moved all the furniture in the living room and did the carpet in here first, as this really was our problem area, but with soap left and time remaining on our 4-hour rental, we decided that the basement would be done too.  We’ve also saved just enough soap to do the upstairs landing.  But that will need to wait until Abby wakes up.

Interestingly though, DoItYourself.com, a free website with thousands of articles and over 100 active forums scanning a huge range of DIY projects, suggest that soap or shampoo for a carpet is not the best product to use.  The explanation?

• "Ever wash your hair and forget to rinse out all the shampoo? The same thing happens to your carpet. The shampoo can't be completely rinsed out, leaving a sticky residue. That residue acts like a big magnet pulling the dirt from the bottom of your shoes. Now you have clean shoes and even dirtier carpets."

The articles, written by a Mary Findlay who apparently spent 12 years professionally cleaning homes, suggests instead that we should be adding 1 cup of vinegar to 2.5 gallons of water in our carpet-cleaning machine.  Vinegar pulls out the old shampoo and helps to clean the carpet.  Then you just go over it one more time with plain hot warm and your carpet will end up “soft and free from grime”.  Sounds good!

So now I’ve just got to relay to Stephen that he better go over the carpets again with vinegar and water.  Maybe next time, I’ll read about the task at hand before we start!

Anyway, the website is full of useful tips and suggests many, many DIY projects that I would just love for us to undertake.  Our home tends to have the must-haves done to it, like when something breaks, but we would like to become the type of people who take on a new task because we’d like to see the improvement to our home.  But with two young children, that’s a tall order.

DoItYourself.com easily replaces one of those hard cover DIY books that you see in the local hardware store, but this one is free and always at your fingertips.  They’ve got useful articles on how to install key in knob lock, how to build a wood fence, and even how to make your own Christmas tree ornaments from wrapping paper.

Be sure to check out their home improvement and repair DVDs section.  Because knowledge is power!

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15.9.07 16:51