Best Carpet Stain Remover Ever

In helping my senior mother with her life, I've had to tackle (1) a dirt (escaping from a vacuum cleaner) stain; (2) spilled coffee stains; and (3) blood stains on her otherwise lovely and pristine-looking carpet. In case you're wondering about the blood, it occurred as she absentmindedly scratched a white mole on her ankle. The injured mole bled a lot and she didn't even notice it, dripping blood on 3 areas of the rug as she returned to her chair.

An all-purpose stain remover from a dollar store didn't work.

Through trial and error (avoiding cleaners that would take the color out of the carpet), what got the stains out was a combination of the following ingredients:

Homemade Carpet Stain Remover

Ingredients:

water-diluted ammonia in a spray bottle (50/50 is actually too strong. I use it as an all-purpose cleaner for household surfaces and now only pour about 1/3 ammonia to 2/3 water, still too much according to this.)

Dishwashing liquid

white vinegar

baking soda

tap water in a cup

a scrub brush

several paper towels

Directions:

1) Wet the stain with water-diluted ammonia.

2) Follow with drops of soap and undiluted white vinegar.

3) Pour baking soda on top of the wet mixture and let it fizzle. I use a scrub brush to work the mixture into the carpet. Toss some clean water on top if the paste is too dry.

4) Let the paste set/dry until the next morning. After 5 minutes or so you can also blot it with paper towels but not excessively so. I covered the wet spot with a couple of paper towels until the next morning so my mom remembered to walk with her walker around the stain. While drying it smells like a big salad.🥗:)

5) Repeat the treatment if needed. When a stain is extra tough, drops of dishwashing detergent can be added to the effort. When the treatment is complete and dry you can vacuum over it. 

We only needed one application. The stains are gone. What a welcome surprise!

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Plastic Spray Bottles, Yeah!

Sometimes the most basic home accessories make life sweeter. Extra power circuit breaker strips strategically placed throughout your home are an example. Plastic spray bottles are another. 

To make household cleaning efficient and easy, I have 4 plastic spray bottles, the 32-ounce size, which I bought several years ago at Home Depot. I don't recommend going bigger or smaller in size. Smaller, you'll be refilling your bottle every time you turn around, and bigger gets heavy to lift and less nibble to point and spray as you clean.

I fill my 4 spray bottles with (1) white vinegar and water (keeping bottles in both my kitchen and bathroom; (2) ammonia and water (kept in the kitchen to remove sink and countertop stains like coffee); and since the pandemic began, (3) bleach and water (stashed near the front door and bathroom). 

Before the pandemic, I cleaned my kitchen; bathroom; and apartment floors with white vinegar and water only; and my glass and mirrors with ammonia and water (homemade Windex) ... but the pandemic has given me a newfound respect for bleach -- adding 4 tablespoons to 32-ounces of water is an inexpensive Center For Disease Control (CDC) approved disinfectant of the coronavirus. At the beginning of Covid when we were less sure of how the virus spread, I used the breach and water to spray the soles of my shoes and entryway of my apartment. (If you recall, we couldn't buy alcohol or hydrogen peroxide until the supply chain caught up with demand.)

Spray bottles are the perfect tool to disinfect and clean surfaces, big or small, with a powerful fine mist of household cleaners. You get the surface very wet with a cleanser while using less product. There's no waste of the liquid going everywhere else, nor of leaving spots of surface dry. Instead, it's an even saturation of cleaner/disinfectant ... bullseye, right where you need it!

And during COVID, these spray bottles make disinfecting like crazy easy. Who knew when I bought them they'd get such a workout?!

I'm also a fan of putting spray triggers on the tops of alcohol and hydrogen peroxide bottles in my home. I liked the practice so much when cleaning, I transferred the idea over to wound sanitizing. For an even application of disinfectant on boo-boos without waste, I'll point the trigger: Pscht ... bullseye!🎯🙂

Now, let's discuss when to splurge and save on buying plastic spray bottles:

For home cleaning mixtures, I went to Home Depot to select professional plastic bottles with sturdy spray triggers, but for the smaller job of disinfecting abrasions with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, I simply repurpose the spray triggers from personal care items (like hair heat tamers, etc,) for free - screwing them directly onto their new products! (That way you also keep the original alcohol and hydrogen peroxide bottles with warning labels.) Wash and rinse the spray triggers well before repurposing them. Save a few bucks if they fit and do the job.

However, the plastic spray bottles for your household cleaners need to be bigger and better as they get used on bigger surfaces frequently, so invest in professional durable bottles and triggers for these tasks. Simplify your life further by buying bottles for all the areas of the home where you'll use them. At about $2 each, they're cheap; and convenience is worth every penny.

Truly, you'll wonder why you didn't buy plastic spray bottles to do your chores sooner!

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The Pink Stuff

The Pink Stuff by manufacturer Stardrops, is all over TikTok as a ''miracle'' cleaning paste. Mildly abrasive, it contains baking soda, sodium silicate, quartz and soap -- all said to be safe and natural cleaning elements.

Like other pastes, you apply it to the surface of the thing you want to clean with a cloth or sponge, gently rub it in, let it sit for a minute and rinse with a wet cloth or sponge. Follow with clean water to remove any residue.

The ''miracle'' is The Pink Stuff makes formally impossible cleaning jobs easy. Difficult stains and gritty grimes are lifted off without a ton of scrubbing. It is especially effective on grease and burnt-on stains, so you can make old pots and tea kettles look new again. 

Other things and surfaces it works well on include stovetops (or hobs), sinks, floors, grout between tiles, glass, barbecue grills, outdoor furniture, rust, radiators, shoes (the sides above the soles), doors, and walls (after a test patch for the paint).

Testers on the Today Show and elsewhere say although The Pink Stuff isn't quite the ''miracle'' the manufacturer claims, it comes pretty darn close as a magic cleaning paste! Really tough stains still require some elbow grease and perhaps not everything can be restored to appear new again, yet in their tests, the paste is, indeed, super effective. Good to know!

I wouldn't go out of my way to buy a new cleaning paste, but if I had something stained and nothing else cheaper (like white vinegar, baking soda, salt, soap, lemon juice, ammonia, bleach, Ajax, or Bartender's Friend) worked, I'd try The Pink Stuff. I stock ammonia, Ajax, Bartender's Friend and pure bleach, but only turn to them for the heaviest, dirtiest, or germ-prone jobs. Mostly they're standbys. The Pink Stuff is affordable, yet pricer than common household cleaners. Its selling point is the lack of scrubbing needed to get out rust, or heavy-duty stains! The tougher than ordinary grudge!

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Photo above and bar of soap: iStock by Getty free images

The Coronavirius causing Covid-19 is a wicked bug. To kill it, I'm suspending the use of white vinegar, my favorite natural cleaner and bringing out the calvary!  A pandemic calls for disinfectants approved to work by the Center For Disease Control. Thankfully as serious as the virus is, it can easily be destroyed by common household cleaners when used in the right proportion and way. 

Coronavirious has a protective outside protein coating. Its RNA (DNA) inside causes the respiratory disease. The correct disinfectants break up its coating. The RNA falls out and disintegrates.

Here are the CDC approved cleaners to use:

1) Soap and water - Works on hands and household surfaces. Wash your hands for at least 20 secconds (the time it takes to sing "Happy Birthday" twice) and scrub vigorously like a surgeon about to operate.

2) Purell - A combination of 60% alcohol and aloe. A good hand sanatizer while you are out at the supermarket shopping until you can get to a sink to wash your hands with soap. As much as THE SAVVY SHOPPER likes to make homemade products, it is not recommended at this time. Too risky to get right: The percentage must be 60% alcohol in a hand santizer to kill the virus. During the pandemic, go with the store bought, for-sure formula ... or use straight alcohol if you can't find Purell.

3) Alcohol - 70% strength isopropyl rubbing alcohol. Don't mix with water, use it straight. Stronger is not needed, but now we must take what we can get.

4) Bleach - The CDC formula for making an effective diluted bleach solution is: Use 5 tablespoons (1/3 cup) of bleach in one gallon of water, or 4 teaspoons of bleach in one quart of water. Unfortunately, bleach can't be used on everything, as it discolors fabric and corrodes metal with longterm use, so use it with care. As it turns out (and the reason I researched this subject) my bleach-to-water mixture is too strong, as my nose and throat have been telling me, the vapors creeping out of my bathroom sink and oozing into my living room!) Good to know a much weaker solution works before I fumigate myself along with coronavirus!

5) Hydrogen peroxide - Weaker than bleach; can discolor clothing or rugs, but works, so a good standby. 3% hydrogen peroxide not diluted with water is the strength to use.

Scientists tell us in order "to decontaminate a surface, we can't just wipe it."  Coronavirus sticks to countertops and metal doorknobs. We must scrub vigorously. Crush its outer coating with force. Wet surfaces with bleach wipes, let it soak for a minimum of 4 minutes and evaporate. Wash your hands like a maniac, which also means after cleaning. 

Don't try to kill coronavirus with white vinegar, vodka, or essential oils. You can't be sure of them. With no vaccine available and no herd immunity after infection, we need to defer to the CDC's recommendations.


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Stuff I No Longer Buy

Efforts to simplify life can involve either 1) getting rid of things; or 2) buying (and restocking) less for home. To illustrate, I'll share a few articles no longer on my shopping list:

1) Nick-knacks and decorative trinkets - Nowadays I don't bring anything into my home that has no function. Not even a footrest that doesn't also provide storage! Every object must do something more than collect dust. It must hold, organize or have a job - a talent (so to speak) like mixing a cake, or housing a blanket.

2) Windex glass/mirror cleaner - Now I use a mixture of white vinegar and water. On the rare occasion, I need a stronger solution for an extra tough stain, I mix water with ammonia. So I no longer need to buy Windex.

3) Bathroom cleaner - I use a mixture of white vinegar, water and baking soda to clean bathroom fixtures. Adding plain ole table salt to the mix removes extra tough gooey soap scum. To be truthful, I do keep one bottle each of bleach and ammonia to attack stains that other solutions won't clean, but honestly, I very rarely use either.

4) Spot removers and specialty laundry soaps - An eco-friendly laundry ball to wash clothes which easily fade. Dish soap to get out a food stain on a shirt. Frankly I still use liquid laundry soap for a full load of laundry. Until the balls are validated by scientific studies, go with soap, the tried and true method for heavy-duty laundry cleaning.

5) Floor cleaners - White vinegar and water clean and kills germs without ruining rugs.

6) Oven cleaner - I clean with less abrasive white vinegar and water to keep my new stove looking pristine. I also use white vinegar to clean inside a microwave.

7) Breakfast cereals - The box keeps shrinking to the point it's not worth buying anymore. Instead, I eat oatmeal and other whole grains.

8) Guacamole - Rarely do I buy it. Alternately I buy avocados, usually at $1 each from a fruit stand to eat with hot sauce or salsa. Or make your own guacamole by smashing an avocado in a bowl with a fork. Add salt, pepper, red pepper flakes to taste, garlic, chopped cilantro, and some lemon juice. Delish.

9) Cake mix and canned icing - Nope. Homemade from scratch, or made by a good bakery. No in-between!

10) Fashion jewelry - All I need are a few pieces of fine jewelry that I love wearing over and over again. I wouldn't discourage a teenager or twenty-year-old from having the fun of experimenting and changing up their looks with inexpensive fashion jewelry. Been there, done that. Nowadays I'd rather save up for a few lovely pieces of real gold and stones, then wear them to death. Less is more ... as you only need a few good pieces.

Can you make my list longer by adding items you've stopped buying?


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