Product Review: OxiClean Carpet Spot & Stain

I know...it's a little strange putting product information up on a family blog, but I HAVE to share this with you!

When Ric and I bought our house, it had blood-orange shag carpet - at least 2" thick - throughout the entire house. Of course, that was the FIRST thing to go! (Though we still see little red/orange fibers outside every once in a while...Hmmm....)

We picked out a nice Berber carpet and had it installed. Unfortunately, when it was installed, we realized that we thought it was a darker color. Of course, we were stuck with it, and we've lived with the problem of stains ever since.

Anyway, about a year after having it installed, we decided to have the carpet cleaned and called Stanley Steemer. There weren't a TON of stains, just a little dirt from the traffic areas and such. At first, it seemed like they had done a good job, but a few months later, we noticed that the stains we did have were coming back! (And this was supposed to be stain resistant carpet!) My guess is that the stain resistant properties were removed when we had the carpet cleaned.

Since having Ryan, and two older cats, we ended up with the yuckiest carpet! Stains everywhere. I tried every kind of spot cleaner I could find. We tried carpet shampoo-ers, even Kirby! Nothing worked to REALLY take the stains out and keep them out! They kept coming back later!

Until now....I ran across OxiClean Carpet Spot and Stain a few weeks ago. I found it at Bed, Bath & Beyond for 4.99 a bottle. You just spray it on to the stain, let it sit for 3-5 minutes, then rub it around with a cloth. This stuff is FANTASTIC! I feel like I have NEW CARPET!

Since I'm a little anal about my carpet now...I decided to take before and after pictures of one particular stain. I don't even remember what it was, probably cat puke, or something like that, but it wasn't a pretty stain!

This is the BEFORE picture...lovely, isn't it?

I used the OxiClean stuff and waited about 2 weeks before I took the after picture, just to see if the stain would come back. In fact, the instructions did say that some stains might need to be treated twice. There were a few that did on our carpet, but not a lot.



This is the AFTER picture, taken a couple of weeks later. You can see that it's MUCH cleaner! In fact, it's almost gone! Woo Hoo!

Yes, it is labor intensive. I'm on my hands and knees, but it WORKS!

We were talking about having another carpet cleaning come in, but there wasn't one company out there that would guarantee that if spots came back in a few months, that they'd clean it again at no charge.

So....I'll stick with my $5 bottle of OxyClean for now!