In my new house there is wall-to-wall carpeting. It is all off-white and you know it shows the dirt. It is a nice carpet but it is seven years old and it has seen some living by the people who owned the house previously. (They must have had a pet that was not overly concerned with going outside to do its business.) There are some stains and other blotchy areas. I wanted to rip it out and buy new carpet; my husband wanted to clean it. Since money is tight these days (when isn’t it?) we decided to go ahead and buy a rug cleaning machine. It is a shampoo machine, not a steam cleaner.

We have been cleaning one room at a time each week to see how it would look. It looks pretty good. The machine took out almost all the stains and the carpet really is in good shape. It was a wise, and frugal, decision to clean instead of buying new.

Each week we have to shuffle all the furniture and other stuff from room to room. The strategy of doing only one room a week is working well because the carpet can be exposed to the air for seven days so that it will be completely dry before we put the furniture back. We have only one more room to do and then we are finished. It is good to know that the machine does such a nice job; I know we will have to clean the carpeting from time to time. The rug cleaning machine is the same size as my vacuum cleaner so it doesn’t take up too much room in the closet.