2005-03-26: House Call from the Rug Doctor

My carpet's been long due for a good cleaning, and actually it can be argued that it wasn't even clean when I moved in. While I apparently did not get any pictures of it earlier, this spot in particular has indeed been there since I moved in. It got a bit worse thanks to the ridiculous amount of rain, which generated plenty of mud, but it still wasn't good to begin with.

As an experiment, I filled a medium sized pitcher with water and poured it on my carpet in the middle of one of the worst spots. I then used Artoo to remove the water, under the rationale that the water will loosen the dirt on the way through the carpet, then Artoo will pick up the water and some of the dirt on the way back up. Judging from the color of the water Artoo pulled out of the carpet, my theories did indeed work. I had a manic gleam in my eye and was actually considering bringing my garden hose inside the living room to hose the entire hallway down, but thought better of it and decided to experiment with more orthodox carpet cleaning methodologies. I shall, however, retain this method for dealing with small, recent spots.

It turns out that Food4less does indeed rent Rug Doctors, so I decided to give it a shot. I've never used an RD before, and now that I've used it, it's rather nice. I'm having thoughts of picking up a used one if available some time. The one thing I didn't realize, which wasn't really emphasized in the instruction manual, is that although you activate the suction with the switch up front on the unit, you actually have to press the red button to do the foaming, brushing stuff. It took me a bit of time and wondering if the unit was broken or not.

At any rate, once I figured that out, I was able to perform quite a bit of cleaning. The foam actually came up brown in the hallway area, and there are a large number of dark carpet spots which no longer plague me. I was able to move all of the clutter and furniture out of the dining area so that I could clean the entire thing, plus the hallway and select portions of the TV area. Unfortunately, I had to leave some spots behind because there simply isn't enough space to shuffle enough stuff around in one day. At any rate, I do have a large container of cleaning solution left over from this exercise, which I can use on subsequent rentals or if I buy my own rug doctor later on. I knew going into this, that there was no way I was going to be able to get the whole place cleaned out with one rental, but at least I could make a big dent in it. The photos from this exercise are here, and the differences have been quite soundly noted by visitors. Mostly they're "during" and "after" pictures, but there's a couple of more notable "before's" in the top of the gallery.

While rearranging the stuff in the living room, last Saturday's self-indulgence (spending the day cleaning my own room for a change) has been utterly undone. The reclaimed space has been filled with things from the living room, which now looks better than it has for quite some time. The good news is that Mom is in town and handling grandmother duty for a while, so for the duration of her visit I've got two-day weekends. I may be able to get a substantial amount of cleaning accomplished.