Necessity is the Mother of All Invention

I think I earned a badge today, but whether its for creativity or stupidity, I'm not sure.

Our carpet has gotten particularly gross over the last, oh, 9-12 months since last it was steam cleaned. With two relatively laid-back parents, a toddler and a tumor, it really comes as no surprise. Recently, however, it has come to pass that when you spot clean a spill at our house, your eye is forevermore drawn to the island of near-white in an ocean of nasty grey carpet. Hell, it was even bugging Husband. Definitely time to do something about it.

After a 15 minute (ok, hour and twenty) round of Sudoku on the computer, I wrestled my way into the front hall closet and pulled out our vacuum and the steam cleaner we inherited from Mer. With glee, I filled the reservoir with soap and hot water, spot treated the carpet and took a deep breath. Soon, so soon, I'd have the satisfaction of watching all the water get sucked out of the carpet and back up the clear top of the cleaner, installed specifically for weirdos like me who get off on watching cleaning actually taking place!

Wearing a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else (ah, the joys of being home alone!), I turned on the switch and began pushing. But joy was not to be mine. For some reason, the water wouldn't drain down into the sprayer. Oh sure, the cleaner still sucked like a $10 hooker, but there was nothing there to swallow. After a 15 minute (ok, and hour and twenty) interlude of listening to the crappy music while on hold with the help line, I gave up and started thinking of alternate ways to get my carpet cleaned. I could've just taken the cleaner into the shop and had it fixed, but I'd already moved furniture! Sprayed spot cleaner all over everything! Stalled on the other projects I should've been working on! I couldn't give up now; I just couldn't!

I splashed some of the soapy water onto the carpet and ran the cleaner over it to see what would happen, and lo! It actually lightened the shade of the carpet from 'Chimney Sweep' to 'London skies', so I tried it again. Splash water. Run and turn on vacuum. Drag cleaner over affected area slowly. Repeat 2-3 times daily, or per doctors instructions. Progress was being made. However, the uneven splashing of the soap was starting to make our carpet look like a bad Pollack painting (I briefly considered writing something with soap on the carpet, but the idea that someone might come over to our house and see 'Husband has a nice ass' or somesuch written in the grime of our floor was a bit much, even for me.)

I didn't mind the tediousness of the process, but squiggly lines in the carpet were just not the look I was going for. How better to evenly distribute the cleaning solution over the carpet? A spray bottle would've worked, but my hand would've cramped long before there was enough soap down to do any good (plus that's my mastubating hand.) And luckily for Husband, we do not own one of those machines for spraying grass seed all over the lawn. Hmm. I know -- lemme try the vegetable steamer! And you know what? It worked! I sprinkled a gentle rain shower of industrial soap and water down on our carpet and then sucked it back up again. Rinse, repeat. Rinse repeat. Bucket after bucket of satisfyingly black water went down the drain; hooray!

After about 15 minutes (ok, and hour and...oh, never mind,) I ran out of soap and had to stop. I ended up only 'cleaning' about 20% of the carpet, and even that could definitely use another pass or two. But it does look so much better. Now I just have to send out an email to the Mom's club and see if anyone has a machine I can borrow while waiting for mine to get fixed. Oh, and I need to clean the bathroom floor as well as the bathtub, because the floor is covered in black drops, and the bathtub -- well, I should've been dumping that crap into the toilet.

So glad I saved myself so much time by manually steam cleaning the carpet instead of waiting until the machine was fixed!