Day 17: Carpet Cleaning Conundrum

July 17, 2009

To my dismay the stains on my carpet were becoming too much to ignore. So today I broke out the stain treatment applied a little elbow grease and scrubbed the bu-jeez-us out of my carpets. After treating and scrubbing I dragged out my aging, falling apart, not really sure if its doing anything worthwhile carpet cleaner. As you can see from the picture the hand attachment is worthless. So much so, that it has remained knotted around the handle now for at least 2 years. There is probably grunge hiding in corners of the inside parts that is older than my son. And to be honest I'm not really sure all the brush heads rotate anymore. Even with all this I'm still not sure I'm ready to throw the ole' girl out yet. I say "girl", by the way, because who else does the carpets? In my house this role is fulfilled only by someone of the feminine persuasion...but I'm sidetracking...

I hate to get rid of her because she's been so handy over the years. She's cleaned up dog pee, kid puke, main walkway grunge, car carpets, linoleum floors, and bathtub overflows. I'm afraid that if I get rid of her I might actually have to get down there and sop those messes up the old fashioned way...shudder...with a towel...by hand!

I do hear you asking, "why not buy a new one?" Well frankly...because I'm cheap! I bought this handy little gal about 10 years ago when I was going through some sort of shopping therapy thing, that unfortunately put a very large dent in our pockets. I've since become slightly more well adjusted and more than slightly more of a curmudgeon with money so it is highly unlikely that I would make such a purchase again. Not to mention, since I loathe cleaning carpets and avoid it until it can't be avoided anymore, with the absence of my "ole girl", I'd probably just hire someone to come in and clean our carpets for us. This poses another problem. That's just a plain waste of money! Why pay someone to do something I can do myself?

Wow I think I just talked myself into a circle there, and I'm not sure I'm any closer to making a decision. I guess I'll just roll her back into the closet and broach the subject the next time I need to do carpets.

I can say I did accomplish something today though, my carpets are pretty darn clean now. Just can't say for sure if its because of the carpet cleaner or my scrub brush and elbow grease!

*sigh*