Home Staging and Vomit Be Gone

Home Staging cleaning/deoderizing tip: We recently had a middle-of-the-night vomit-on-the-carpet episode at our house. We spot cleaned within the hour of staining, but couldn’t get the stain out. Luckily we were due for our bi-annual carpet steaming. Our carpet guy isn’t sure if the acidic vomit will come clean. We shall find out when it dries.

Our carpet is an unfortunate shade of creamy-oatmeal. This looks good maybe two days of the year, when the stars are aligned and no one has foot printed the vacuum marks to show the underlying stains. My primary advice is never to install white, cream, or off-white carpet in high traffic areas. If you are already stuck with the stuff, try to stay on top of the everyday stains by spot-cleaning, vacuum frequently before soil gets ground in, and steam your carpet twice a year. I used to always do this myself, renting a steamer at the hardware store and spending a good four hours pushing and pulling that machine around. This costs between $35.00 and $70.00. This past year I have been treated to hiring out for the service. The time saved and quality of service far outweighs the cost of $100.00-$200.00. (I know that over-cleaning can “strip” the carpet fibers, and at a certain point, steaming is useless…so at some point, rip that carpet out and install something new!)