Homemade Carpet Cleaner - Red Stains!!!

My son moved out of the house a few months ago, and after he got all his stuff out, we slowly have started claiming back our territory. His room had the only carpet in the house, and before it was his room, it was his sister's room, so it's had two teenagers living in it over the last 12 years, and the carpet was evidence of that!

I was able to get  most of the spots out with my beloved Tuff Stuff, but there was one spot - an ugly, old, some-kind-of-red-dye spot. Was it Kool-aid? Paint? Nail polish? Marker? Who knows. But it WAS right where you can see it, not cover-able with furniture. Nothing was budging that thing, including a soaking with hydrogen peroxide:


I figured I would just have to live with it, until I saw Jilleee's blog post about how to remove tough carpet stains (she's got an awesome blog!). I was intrigued, and as I did a little more research, I saw that this was a pretty well-known tactic to remove red stains.

I really didn't have much hope, but thought, "Hey what have I got to lose? I can blog about it!"
I assembled the ingredients and tools:


And followed the very easy instructions for making the cleaning concoction:

Mix equal amounts hot water and ammonia in a spray bottle.

THAT was pretty easy!

I then settled down on the floor with my spray bottle, iron and some white rags.

I started by trying to spray the spot:


Bummer, because my spray bottle just wouldn't spray, no matter what I did. So, I just poured the stuff onto the stain:


Then, after it sat for a few minutes, I placed the white rag over the spot and started ironing it:


To my amazement, the red started coming up, along with some gross old dirt:


Some of it was for sure dirt, but as I continued to pour and iron, pour and iron, I realized that not only was the red stain coming up, so was the carpet dye!


After about 30 minutes of the process, no more red dye was coming up, and this is what I ended up with: 


Verdict: the red stain remover does pretty much remove red dye, but it also removes carpet dye (possibly also due to previous use of hydrogen peroxide), so proceed with caution. 


The spot is very visible in the room: 


So, the question is - do I prefer the pink spot to the red spot? I think I do. You may soon be seeing an experiment in carpet dying on the blog! :)


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