Awesome Home Made Carpet Cleaner Solution

Most of our mountain home has lovely hardwood floors, but some bedrooms do have carpet, as does the family room and a set of stairs.  That’s nice for the feet on a cold winter’s morning, but notsomuch when you have mucky boys and dogs and cats running through.

Enter my own personal carpet cleaner.

Bought years ago when we lived in a house which was mostly carpeted, it has paid for itself about a million times over.  Less than three uses and I was already saving money over renting a machine!

But for a (tragically) long time I paid the RIDICULOUS price stores charge for the special carpet cleaner solution that traditionally goes in steam cleaning machines. I paid those prices assuming that there had to be some very crucial secret formula required to work in the machine, clean well AND not damage carpets.

I should have known better.  Seriously.  Shame on me!

Of COURSE there is an inexpensive, easy to make home made carpet cleaning solution!  And it’s a FRACTION of the cost of the stuff that’s sold right next to the machines.  Literally only pennies per tank full!!  Here it is:

Ingredients:

• Hot water (as hot as it will come from the tap)
• 2 Tablespoons of White Vinegar
• 1/4 Cup Hydrogen Peroxide (3%. . .the regular stuff you usually find in the first aid section)
• 1 Tablespoon Mild Dish Soap (Ivory/Dawn/etc. . .just make sure there is no BLEACH in the ingredients!)

Method:

• Add vinegar and peroxide to tank of cleaner
• Fill tank up with hot water from the tap
• Add dish soap (don’t do it first, or you will have lots of foamy suds, and resist the temptation to add any more than the one tablespoon or it will be a bubble fest!)
• Replace tank in machine
• Clean as per your machine’s directions!

How easy and cheap is that?

Now just to figure out a home made recipe to PREVENT the muck in the first place!