Aug 02 2008
Carpet Soap Mess
Here’s another great mess story with some excellent tips for carpet.
My son located an unopened bottle of baby shampoo recently (it was in the top drawer of the changing table which he can barely reach and definitely can’t see into). I think he stood on his toes and reached in until he was able to grasp something with his little paw and it just happened to be an unopened bottle of shampoo.
Miraculously, he was able to take off the cap and take off that foil seal inside (which is incredible because I usually need a knife to get those things off). He plopped himself down in the living room and I came running from the kitchen when I heard “wash bear,” “bath for bear.” He had set his bear on the carpet and proceeded to dump the entire bottle of shampoo on him. In his defense, the bear was pretty dirty so I like to think it was a well thought out plan to clean the bear and not just a moment of total insanity.
I quickly discovered that shampoo isn’t so easy to remove from carpet. It just suds, and suds, and suds, and it never comes out. If you happen to have one of those fancy carpet steamers with suction this wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t so it was going to more complicated than that. Here is what my all powerful research skills located:
- White vinegar: Pour generously on the carpet and it will kill the suds. Then you can proceed to clean it up as a normal stain. Our carpet is very light so I did this without worrying much about the color but if you’ve got dark colored carpet I would suggest a test spot just in case.
- Liquid fabric softener: I didn’t try this one myself but I read it will do the same thing as vinegar - cut the suds so you can actually clean.
- Water & shop vac: If you’ve got some time on your hands you can add a little water at a time to the soap and suck it up with a shop vac. Keep repeating and eventually all the soap will be gone.
Hopefully this won’t ever happen to you - it’s a total pain - but just in case it does keep this in mind!
