My home carpet cleaning tips

My old style secret weapon

If you're into cleaning your own carpets, and have one of those steam-vac/extractor carpet cleaner models, here's a tip or two.

For tough stains and other spotting, I spray a dash or two of Folex brand spot treatment on the blemished area, and then brush it with an old style rotating brush carpet shampooer. This can either be done before or after an initial pass with the steam-vac.

The brushes on a shampooer work better than those on the newer steamers at driving out dirt. They also seem to do a better job at fluffing up flat trampled carpet. After pre-treatment and some brushing, use the steam-vac/extrator unit as you usually would. The results are usually impressive.

My extractor is a typical
Hoover home model

I'm advocating the shampooer as an addition to the extractor, not  a replacement. I don't use the tank on my shampooer for the initial treatment because it leaks.

Only draw back to the old shampooers is that they're getting hard to come by. Used to be you could find them at Goodwill or other thrift stores for around ten bucks. Sometimes less at yard sales. But since they fell out of favor 15 or 20 years ago, they're getting harder and harder to come by.

You can guess what I did last night. And I was so pleased with the results, I got up early this morning and tackled another couple of rooms.