Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaning Tip: Remove Red Wine Stains

I simply love hydrogen peroxide. It's cheap, it's plentiful (available at any drugstore for around a buck or so) and it's a downright powerful little cleaner. Jan B wrote in with a great tip on using it to remove red wine stains.

Jan wrote: "I use peroxide with a dash of Dawn dishwashing soap on red wine spills. But always blot wine spot first with paper towels to remove the excess. Never rub. Then I use a cotton ball with the peroxide and soap and dab until stain is gone."

No Hassle Housecleaning Hint: Just test this in an inconspicuous area of carpeting first, since peroxide also has a serious bleaching effect. And, a big blog of bleached out carpet wouldn't be much better than the wine stain! If you have pale carpet, this should work incredibly well. Thanks Jan, for the idea.

How do you use hydrogen peroxide to clean? Let me know, as I'm working on a new Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaning page on www.happyslob.com.

Freshen the Carpets WHILE You Vacuum

Want a nice fresh scent added to your carpet while vacuuming? Here are a few tips on how to achieve it...

• Add a fabric softener sheet the bag or cannister of your vacuum cleaner.
• Add a few drops of natural essential oil or even a spray of perfume to the vacuum cleaner bag or cannister! Yes, people might look at you funny if they see you spraying your vacuum with perfume, but just ignore them. They're probably judgmental types anyway.
• Sprinkle some baking soda liberally on the carpets before you vacuum, and then let the baking soda sit and do its natural odor removing work for about fifteen minutes or so. When you vacuum as usual you'll suck away dirt and muck - and a lot of nasty pet or smoke odors!

Crazy Cleaning Tips - Cleaning with Vodka - Happy Slob Housecleaning Tips

Now here's a bunch of cleaning tips that should really grab your attention - cleaning with vodka! "Vodka??" You might ask. "Is she nuts?" Well...that's still up for debate, but on the topic of cleaning with vodka, I'm absolutely serious.

I've collected some of my favorite vodka cleaning tips for you, all right here. And remember: you certainly don't need a beautiful, expensive bottle of vodka for cleaning purposes. Just the cheapest old variety will do a fantastic job.

1. Cleaning pet stains - of which I've encountered many! Vodka is great at lifting even tough stains. Since vodka is colorless and odorless, it won't add any additional staining to your carpet. I would be tempted to try a few tablespoons in my little carpet spot cleaner the next time the cats have a stomach upset...I'll post the results.
2. Jewelry cleaner - Get those rocks sparkling again! Just let them soak in a tiny dish, swishing the jewelry around a bit to loosen gunk and grime that's had time to collect over the years. This is a tip I'm going to utilize this week - my old diamond solitaire is looking pretty UN-sparkly and needs a good clean.
3. Cleaning leather - this was posted a couple of years ago by a Happy Slob reader: "I also used straight vodka to clean white paint off my son's black leather jacket. Worked great."
4. Cleaning chandeliers - Now I don't have a chandelier myself, but I can only imagine the agony it must be to clean one! So I found this tip using vodka for all of you who DO have chandeliers to clean: "Vodka is also an excellent cleaner for chandeliers. Just mix one part of vodka with five parts of water and spray it on your chandelier. Let the excess drip onto a towel on the floor below."
5. Cleaning clothing stains - Use it full strength to muscle away stubborn stains on clothing, including grass stains or food stains.

Happy Slob's Housecleaning - Product Review - Dirt Devil Spot Scrubber (Mini Portable Carpet Cleaner)

Product Review of:

Dirt Devil Spot Scrubber - Mini Carpet Cleaner for Spots

I was really fed up with some nasty stains in our carpet (ahem...let's just say that one of our pet cats has a real affection for finding the most obvious spots to barf up her furballs!). No matter what I did, I couldn't budge those stains, and in fact seemed to be making them worse with every attempt to clean them! Whenever I looked at one of those stubborn stains, it seemed to grin and chuckle at me, or wave as if to remind me of its very presence. As if I could've forgotten it!

So...hubs and I decided that it was time to finally buy some sort of carpet cleaner. But, we live in a modest 2-bedroom apartment without much storage space at all. Even our closets are just sort of wanna-be's with not much room for anything other than the absolute essentials. (And don't get me STARTED about our linen closet...) Wow, I'm in a cranky mood today, huh?

Right - back onto the topic at hand: our lovely new portable carpet cleaner! It's tiny and meant for spot removal as opposed to large carpet cleaning jobs. Just what we were looking for! Here it is:

We had planned on buying the "Little Green" spot cleaner, but both stores hubs went to were out of stock, so he purchased this one instead. And I'm very glad that he did! Our little Dirt Devil Spot Scrubber (the exact model shown - I've read that the smaller hand vac type doesn't work nearly as well) works like a dream. We used it on an old tea stain (that one was entirely my fault - I was climbing into bed one day with a full cup of hot tea, and well, I ended up in the bed, but the tea didn't make it onto the nightstand. It splashed dramatically all over the carpet!) and a few old kitty-tummy-upset stains with much better than expected results.

On the oldest, most stubborn stains, I think it will take 2-3 runs of the machine to get the stain out entirely, but we were both impressed by how it slurped up the old messes. The dirty water container got muddy-looking very quickly! I was thrilled to see those old stains start to disappear before my eyes. And relieved to see the demise of my old, mocking enemies...

Good Points:

• Large tank size! We would only need to fill this and empty it occasionally. Considering it's just for spots - you could do a LOT of spot removal before the tank would need refilling.
• Worked great with just hot tap water, about a quarter cup of white vinegar and the tiniest drop (literally) of liquid laundry detergent. I think you could very easily get away without even adding the detergent, but I knew these stains were particularly tough ones.
• Powerful suction - you spray the solution on (in our case, vinegar and water and a drop of detergent - I didn't even bother with the freebie cleaner solution that came with the unit), scrub it with the brush and at the same time it sucks all the mess away. The suction was impressively powerful - better than I'd expected for this price.
• A great bargain! Ours was on sale for $59.99, but is on regularly for $69.99 at Amazon and other online vendors. I thought it was well worth it...

What I Would Change if I Could:

• Make the brush bigger - it's about 3 inches in length, and it would be nice to have a slightly larger brush to cover a larger area more quickly. It's not a serious flaw, though.

All in all, I really love this little gizmo. Now, when my beloved kitty has a stomach upset, I won't be in a tizzy to get the stain out, because this machine on fresh stains I think will be a true powerhouse. (And on old stains, it's proven itself already!)

Removing Cat Urine Odors from Carpets - Organic Cleaning Tips

Looky, looky! I just received this fantastic testimonial on using plain old water and vinegar to get out cat urine smells. And I own two cats, both of whom have had occasional 'oopsies'...so I know very well that particular TANG of cat urine. Ick.


Here's the original post on using water & vinegar to clean carpets: http://www.happyslob.com/carpetsolution.html
Here's the email:

Hi Christina,

I actually used the Steam Cleaning Tip of Hot Water and Vinegar and unbelievably it cleaned out a cat urine smell. (my cat was ill and had an accident).

I had tried the commercial solution and it smelled like flowery cat pee LOL. I used the vinegar and water solution in my machine for 3 days straight and even though the vinegar smelled a little ripe, the end result when it dried was no odor, and the carpet was much brighter overall.

Thanks for the tip!

Lynnette