Undercover Mother

Tip: Vinegar as carpet stain remover.

It seems like vinegar is the cure for anything. I am actually surprised that when I take my kids to the doctor for strep throat I don’t walk away with a prescription for 10ml vinegar twice a day. Seems like it would work, but then I guess the doctors wouldn’t get to enjoy any kickbacks from pharmaceutical reps and use my co-pays to finance their home in the Hamptons.

There are a lot of perks to working from home; one of those perks is NOT noticing every spot and stain your carpet has to offer. This morning I ventured into the basement to see what the kids and their friends left for me from the previous night, and as I was doing my surveillance I found several new spots that look suspiciously like the juice and chocolate that I know was consumed the day before.

I have one stain in particular that I have been working on unsuccessfully with store-bought cleaner; this stain is SunnyD drink that someone not only let drip from a sippy cup, but covered with multiple pieces of paper so I might not notice the spot. I don’t know how long it remained there like that, but I have tried multiple cleaning products and the stain has not budged! I decided that I would try a tip using vinegar and salt on the stain.

Tip specifics

Rub light carpet stains with a mixture of 2 tablespoons salt dissolved in 1/2 cup white vinegar. Let the solution dry, then vacuum.

True or bull?

Bull, at least for the SunnyD stain. It is lighter for sure, but the stain is still visible and the carpet has a crunchy feel where the solution dried.

Undercover Mother’s revelations

I did try this tip afterward on a couple of small stains, and it seemed to work. The carpet, however, is now crunchy like it was on the SunnyD area and needs to be shampooed in all the areas I tried. I would try this tip in the future on other stains when the usual carpet stain removers are not effective, even if it does require a bit of carpet shampoo afterward. I may even skip the shampoo and tell my neighbors that it is a new expensive Berber carpet that also exfoliates the bottom of your feet and see how many of them run out to try to buy the same thing.

Tip: Use a fork to fluff carpet.

You read it right: I wrote “forking carpet.” About every other week, I attempt to dust and push the vacuum around, and sometimes I even take my time and do a good job. One thing that always bothers me is the indentations left from the furniture, causing me to rant on about the forking carpet!

While the indentations in my carpet bother me, I am usually more focused on the pile of laundry that I have to climb over to get into the kid’s bedroom or the loaf of crumbled bread underneath the kitchen table. These are things that I can attack and they go away, at least for a few hours.

I have to laugh when I see people use those furniture coasters (you know, the same ones our grandparents used 60 years ago), which only leave larger dents in the carpet. They don’t work and they look ridiculous. When my bored housewife “friends” talk behind my back, I would prefer it be about my carpet dents then my poor attempt to hide them.

But, I digress. We were discussing what to do about my carpet dents, so I found a tip from Real Simple to try out.

Tip specifics

Use the tines of a fork to gently fluff plush carpet fibers back to their original height, removing dents left by heavy furniture. Now, that’s a real fork lift. 

Please note: I did not write the “fork lift” remark at the end. That was actually part of the tip. If I had written something, it would have been much wittier than that.

True or bull?

Bull. While I was able to rake the carpet around a bit with the fork, the indentation is still clearly there.

Undercover Mother’s revelations

The carpet in my house is about 14 years old, and it looks like a dirty, white cat with a bad case of the mange. I like to tell myself this house is full of love where kids play and blah, blah, blah, but it doesn’t change the fact that the carpet shows every spot of that “love.” Since I was already down there forking away, I tried using some rug shampoo and a toothbrush to fluff those areas up. That made an improvement, but it still isn’t great. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have another mountain of laundry to climb.