The Weekend Green Clean

Yay-day #6 of NaPoBloMo. But as Colleen pointed out, no one much reads blogs on Saturdays/Sundays...unless its some other blogger in the same boat!

So yesterday, we had our carpets cleaned. This involved eviscerating the contents of the basement onto the outside deck,moving the dining room contents into the kitchen, etc. Project Nursery had to be stacked in the Junk Room (aka, the only room in the house with carpet that wasn't being cleaned)...basically, it was pretty chaotic. (beginning the evening before)

The next morning,(around 10 AM) they showed up and commenced to cleaning the house. As you're probably aware, carpet cleaning chemicals can be pretty nasty (read: lethal) stuff, & you're supposed to be out of the house while they're doing the treatments. Well, with this place (using nontoxic stuff) it wasn't quite that imperitive to be out of the house...you just had to be in a room that wasn't undergoing treatment. (that room would be the kitchen) We have two cats, a baby on the way,& the toxic crap they use to clean carpets is decidedly NON-APPEALING. (say what you may) And the cost, comparitively, was about what it would be with the traditional method.

I ran some errands, getting back about noon. The cleaning team they sent out was composed of two guys...one of whom did the actual work, the other one did the talking. (the instant I walked through the door, he started talking, and didn't "finish" until 2 solid hours later) It was like listening to a Billy Mays infomercial. What did he talk about? A little bit of everything...the evils of large carpet cleaning corporations (in particular, ChemDry, who was apparently resposible for the death of Jett Travolta), the physiology of cat puke/urine/etc. & how to treat such stains to GET THEM OUT FULLY, past horror stories of the houses they had cleaned,(that had gone the traditional cleaning route) the state of the economy, what products we needed to get(that were Au Natrale), how Gerber/Mott's is poisoning us (and the babies)with arsenic-laden apple juice from China(64 parts per million,vs the "safe" 3 per million) , Dr. Oz, how talc based powders will give you leukemia/etc., and on and on and on. In the meantime, it's not like we could go anywhere...the cleaning was still going on. So we sat in the kitchen, ate lunch,and listened to him talk. Two hours, people.

But they did a good job, I'll give them that much. The huge yellow splotch that resides in the future Baby Nursery has at least, significantly shrunk. They seemed to think it was from cat urine (and I was duly scolded never to treat such a stain with an OXY based product, but I didn't know what it was from) . I don't think that stain will ever come out fully, we'd have to "patch" swap it out if we ever sold the house. (it's not very large, 2" x 1", perhaps) I think I have permenatly leached the natural color out of the carpet.And they know what they're talking about...they know how to do their jobs. (as well as educate the masses about carpet care) I'm a firm believer in "going green" when it comes to cleaning your house (if possible). It's much safer for your pets. (and for human beings as well)

The carpets took awhile to dry (about 16 hours), so we had to put on plastic booties to walk around till this morning. (and then, we put everything back as it was) As per the carpet warranty, you actually have to have your carpets cleaned every 2 years (at least)...and if you have cats, you're probably going to be doing it 1-2x a year. (at the least) Our cats are getting older, but one of them still pees (not in the litter box) and the other one pukes, so heck yes the carpet is getting constant action. (I can only imagine what it will be like with a child in the mix)