Vinegar as a Rug Cleaner
If you look at Pinterest, it seems like a little white vinegar is the miracle substance of all times. There are claims that it can kill weeds (true, but you need to reapply frequently and your backyard smells like the salad bar at Ruby Tuesdays), unclog your drain, make your old paintbrushes like new, keep flies away, open your pores, and clean your bathroom, bedroom and boudoir. It doesn’t exactly have the fresh clean scent of lemon or pine, but they say it does the trick. You would think with all the powers of vinegar we would be reading about its gangbuster sales in the Wall Street Journal, right? Why are we not seeing that?
Anyway, we have a rug in our kitchen that runs the length between our sink and dishwasher, plus it’s also near the kitchen trash. So you can imagine how much traffic it gets, plus it is in a line of fire for just about any kind of kitchen substance that might be drawn to the floor. I was getting sick of looking at the thing, but I decided to try to clean it before beginning to look for another one. There are a few pins on the boards that claim vinegar can remove stains from carpets, so I found one that looked pretty simple involving an iron and tried it. The photo on Pinterest looks like this:
I started with the two most evil-looking stains. What is that? Could be chocolate milk or tea. Pudding? Tomato sauce? Who knows?
I made a solution of one part vinegar and two parts water and sprayed it on the area. Then I used a wet cloth on top of it and a hot iron.
Yes, I realize that the iron is not on in the photo, but I fixed that after it was taken.
But there wasn’t much change, even after I repeated those steps a few times.
Next, I got out a little scrub brush, and after spraying again with the vinegar, tried to scrub the stains out.
But they were so stubborn!
So, then I was stuck with a stained carpet that reeked of vinegar.
I got the Woolite Carpet Cleaner, sprayed the whole thing, and vacuumed after it dried.
A little better…or at least enough that I don’t feel an urgent need to replace it. Afterall, it really ties the room together. (Some language in the clip, FYI.)
Whether it was because of the type or the age of the stains, I guess I will never know, but vinegar didn’t work too well as a carpet cleaner for me.
