Cleaning > CarpetJuly 16, 2009

To my horror, my strawberry margarita slipped off the end table and disaster struck on my light beige apartment carpet. Being a typical male I begin rubbing not blotting the stain and after a while of scrubbing gave up and went to bed. The next morning it looked worse.

The Home Depot trip purchase did not solve the problem, so I found a tip on this website that I thought I would try and after a little contemplating (since I am an Engineer) I perfected it. Here are the steps to remove a set red stain such as the above mentioned (koolaid, red juices, etc.):

1. 1. Make a small container mix of hot water with an ample amount of blue Dawn dish washing liquid.

2. Pour the solution on the stained area and wait about a minute or so to let the Dawn do its work.

3. Grab a roll of paper towels (like Bounty, the "Quicker Picker Upper").

4. Get your iron out and plug it in with the setting on high. Let it warm up nice and hot.

5. Take about 5 or 6 sections of dry paper towels and fold them so they are just wider than your iron and lay them over the stained area.

6. Take your hot iron and press down on the paper towels. (Don't let your iron contact the carpet directly or you will have a bigger problem, since most carpet is made from plastic, such as nylon,) Instantly the paper towels will begin soaking up the water and a steaming action will occur, hot steam everywhere. Don't worry its just the hot iron and water making contact. You have just created an instant home steam cleaner that will work on most stains actually.

7. When you lift your iron, you should see the stain color being wicked up on the paper towels.

8. When that batch of paper towels becomes soaked, make a new batch and repeat until the towels don't soak up much water anymore.

9. On my stain, I had to apply 3 batches of Dawn and hot water, repeating the whole steaming process.

10. With a little patience the stain disappeared and my apartment deposit is still intact.

11. Don't use white cloth towels as others have suggested, why ruin a perfectly good towel or rag. Paper towels are cheap and soak up the moisture more effectively.

Let me hear about your success stories.

Source: This is an improvement to a tip I found on this site.

By El Marko from El Paso, TX

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