Rug Doctor Catastrophe

I marked this one under health and wellness because I can't decide if my clean carpets are a health hazard- I seem to be growing mold in the wetter areas...

But the carpet looks amazing! ( in certain places.... in others it looks like a kindergartner had free reign with a bleach pen)

 These are the before pictures:

As you can see its dirty. Obviously or I wouldn't need a rug doctor. We had a $10 off coupon and our foster care home visit was the next day so I wanted to spruce up the carpet.

 

As a side note, the above carpet had big dark stains the night before and I treated them with my usual hydrogen peroxide and dawn dish soap. I also thought it would be a good idea to soak up the water with baking soda. I normally just scrub the carpet with a wet rag until it stops foaming, but there were lots of spots and I didn't want to scrub like crazy all night long, and baking soda works on dog pee so why not on a cleaning solution? This is important stuff so don't disregard it, you'll see why in a minute.

 

So the carpet was still gross even though I got the small dark stains out, which is when I chose to go for the rug doctor.

 As you can see I needed to wear appropriate attire to clean my house. I tried sneakers but my feet were soaking, the machine spits our a bit of water from the back. and on the left is a shot of where you fill it up.


I had the wonderful idea that you just fill it up once and you can do your entire house and it's the easiest thing ever to do. WRONG! I had to dump out hte gunky water and refill every 4 passes of the carpet. Do you know how heavy that thing is to dump? well while I'm dumping what looking like clean foamy water i decided to clean the tub at the same time and dump it there.

 

Later Ken came home and asked what I had done to make the tub completely filthy and clog the drain. It was worse than when I give Ruby a bath inside!

So after my first pouring out I decided to use hte toilet. Like the picture shows on the machine. nice.

I found its easier to flush then dump it out into the bowl, that way it doesn't overflow.

 

Here is a shot of it getting a bit foamy. It says that if this happens you have to stop and buy anti foam stuff. fat chance, I just dumped out the water and the foam had dripped down and the machine was ready for action!

 

If the Dr runs out of water/soap, you will see these 2 white soapy lines. that means refill.

Remember when I said I thought I could use the 1 full tank for the whole house? well of course I over soaped the tank to get the most clean. after I realized it runs out in 4 passes, I held back a little with the suds.

Here is my recipe:

squirt blue dawn dish soap into the mesh for 5 seconds, then squirt hydrogen peroxide for 7-10 seconds.

I didn't want to waste time with measuring spoons when I was so busy running back and forth to pour out and refill. I also found refilling in the sink or tub closest to the machine was much better than running back to the kitchen sink. Obvious yes but it took me a while to figure that out...

 

Yes, this just happened.

 I got a little proud of my system and got careless.

 

So, after hours of labor here is what I got.

 

Yes, those are the kindergarten bleach pen works of art.

 

To sum up:

It took forever, places that got extra wet( I had to go over some serious dirt stains multiple times) are now moldy, and yes my house smells weird, I have huge white stains where I had used my brilliant baking soda trick ( not so brilliant with cleaning solution) and the rest of my floor looks amazing!

Would I rent one again? NO, I will call a professional. It took way too many hours and I ruined my carpet in some places( as shown above, and now the smell is getting to us).

 

But on a happy note: Here we are at the beautiful Mesa Temple!!!

 

I love Arizona weather and the amazing temple!