This weekend we’re doing something we should have done long ago, indeed should have been doing regularly since I moved into my house: Steam-cleaning the carpets.
I borrowed a Bissell 9200 ProHeat 2X from my friend James, set it to the “Heavy Traffic” setting and went to work on the bedroom shortly before noon. It works really well! Since it’s been years since the carpets got serious cleaning, I ran over it twice before putting it on the “Rinse” setting and doing it a third time, and at the end the carpet looked so much better than it did before. I did the upstairs hall afterwards, too.
It’s amazing how much cat hair and carpet fuzz I picked up with it – despite having vacuumed the carpets before using the cleaner. It also took me a little while to realize that the thing uses a lot of water and cleaning formula, though I bet it would use less if it weren’t set on Heavy Traffic. We used the whole bottle of formula that James gave us, so we went out and bought several more, since doing the living room and stairs is likely to take at least one full bottle. (Incidentally, the bottles were cheaper at Fry’s than they are at Amazon.) And we might give it all one more pass next weekend (did I mention the carpets haven’t been cleaned in six years?). And I know that it’s worth emptying out the waste-water and cleaning out all the fuzz whenever the clean water tank runs out during cleaning. It’s a little extra work, but everything runs a little smoother if I do that.
I always have a good feeling when finishing a project like this. Okay, I’m not quite finished, but I’ve done a lot of it, and I can see real results. And that’s case for happiness.