Monday, October 6, 2008

Wd-40 Spot Shot

When J and I moved out to New England, we made an initial trip to go house-hunting in the hopes that we wouldn't be living in apartment-land forever. One of my primary must-haves was a carpet-less eating area.


I will never understand why they install carpet, cheap carpet at that, in an area that will be designated for eating. Kitchens and bathrooms are two areas that should never have carpet! While the quest for a home was fruitless, we did find a great apartment. But you guessed it, carpet in the dining area.

In the past, it was always almost a blessing to live in an apartment that had been around for a few years because I could exclaim "Can you believe the piggies that lived here? Just look at this carpet!" This time we were the first tenants, so I can only point the finger at my little piggies.


I was more than happy to test out the Wd-40 Spot Shot when I heard about it from Mom Central. I own a carpet shampooer, and use it about once every other month for our living room and main traffic areas, but the stubborn stains at the entrance area to the dining room from the kitchen never seem to say bye-bye, it's more like Au Revoir.


Here are some pictures of chocolate on the sample swatch of carpet that they gave me to try. They also gave a small bottle of ammonia to test the removal of pet smells, which I was loathe to try because, well, who likes the smell of pee? Because I am a bit of a lush and like my red wine, I decided to throw in a test of my own with red wine, plus an old stain on my carpet as they say it even works on old ground in stains.




The kit I was provided with, plus my own contribution of a glass of wine. Okay, I admit that I was not planning to try the wine, but was drinking it anyway and when I went to move it out of the picture's frame I had an a-ha moment.


Ammonia was sprayed in the upper left-hand corner, and the chocolate and red wine are hopefully fairly obvious.


After the first treatment; the carpet is still wet, so it's hard to see, but the chocolate is gone and the red wine needed only one more treatment. I think that the lighting and my camera weren't great for this shot, because the upper-left hand corner where the ammonia was looks stained, although it didn't have anything there in person.



A small stain on my carpet near the kitchen table. I have about 1.5 million of these as the result of having a cute little boy who doesn't always keep his food on his plate. While they fade with regular cleanings, I don't feel like they're ever gone. This really seemed to get it out.



This is after only one spray on the 'stream' setting, and a quick rub with a cloth.

I was really impressed on all accounts. It took only one treatment to completely remove the chocolate, ammonia and 'old' stains and two for the red wine. When I say two treatments, I simply mean two times of spraying 2-3 squirts on the area and blotting within a 5 minute period, it was really easy! I am so excited to have this product as the most important features are that it's certified bio-degradable, non-toxic and safe for children.


After all, the whole point of cleaning my carpet is so that I don't have to worry or have a shiver of revulsion when I lay C down to play...it would be just a touch counter-intuitive to hose the carpet down with toxic liquids and then lay my baby in it.

I'll be using the Spot Shot to pre-treat all the little spots on my carpet the next time I shampoo and I can't wait to see my 'good as new' carpet again!

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