I know that, at first, this may seem like the worlds most boring blog topic but hear me out folks!
Carpets. Yuck. Rugs-also yuck!
Yesterday Hubby and Son went to a water park and I stayed home(on purpose) and decided to shampoo the carpets and rugs. I know this is a necessary evil when you have carpets but it's all too easy to forget about. To make things worse(things being my incredible objection to all 'additional' cleaning beyond the very basics to keep the home liveable) I have a pretty great vacuum. It's a Rainbow Cleaning System. Instead of bags or canisters it catches all dust and sand and dirt in water so it isn't just blown around your house again. They are fab! I actually had Brandon do a demo video on youtube to show how great it really is. First he vacuumed with our normal canister vacuum and then RE vacuumed with the Rainbow to show all the crap the dirt devil missed. Link to vacuum demo
Anyway, as I was so impressed with my new vacuum it was easy to assume I didn't need to shampoo the carpets very often. Wrong. Oh so wrong! (shakes head in bewilderment).
You see, I've realized this weekend that carpets and rugs are the socks of your house! Unless, that is, you walk on your hands all the time, in which case carpets would be the gloves of your house-but either way-gloves and socks get pretty nasty!
Now there are 3 of us here, one of which is a active(and sweaty) 11 year old boy, we live in a dusty old house, it's a functioning farm, and we have pets. Thank god we don't smoke as well or I think hazmat suits would be required to enter! That's just too many evil forces fighting against the floors. Our downstairs is wood floor with the occasional rug (which, coincidentally, is always the cat's favorite place to puke even though there is 750 square feet of easy to clean floors downstairs! Yuck.)
We spend most of our time downstairs so I wasn't that concerned about shampooing the upstairs carpets. After all there are 5 rooms up there(one with wood floors where I do my pottery so no carpet anyway) and 2 bedrooms that aren't even used so have very little if any traffic. However, we have a friend coming over from England and I want everything to be perfect(insert outrageous burst of laughter here-there's no way this house will be perfect! but humor me) so I borrowed a carpet shampooer. At this point I see no reason to own one as I spot clean the rugs(thanks cat!) and, like I said before, we don't spend that much time upstairs(the only floor with carpet).
Let the seemingly unnecessary carpet shampooing begin.
Now the instructions say to vacuum the rugs and carpets first, which I did. I put all my faith in the vacuum and expected to see little, if any, dirt in the shampoo water. omg. No, scratch that. OMG.
That's when I discovered the horrible truth that carpets are, in fact, the permanent socks of the house. The 'dirt' that came out was stomach turning. Even the rooms that we don't use had gunk sucked out of them. The hallway, aka high traffic area, looked like there was enough 'dirt' there to build a small adobe home! I say 'dirt' because it's obviously dirt and dust but also oils and sweat from feet that have walked over the carpet for years while the carpet absorbs these vile fluids slowly and enthusiastically like the devil's sponge.
Folks if you have carpets (or rugs) shampoo them. Stop right now, get off the computer and go shampoo your carpets! Be prepared. Don't eat a heavy meal before hand. When you're done-do it again!After all-when you wear a pair of socks-and lets go with the really SMELLY pair after a hard day's work or a gruesome workout-would you be happy to just vacuum those socks and wear them again? Maybe sprinkling a little 'carpet deodorizer' on them to help them smell fresh again' HECK NO! Those babies get washed in a hot washer and then dried in the dryer until no possible life can remain! The same should be true of your carpets.
Now two things are true:
1)we will be buying a carpet shampooer this weekend
2) no feet are allowed to touch the carpets!
Much love,
Beth
