Tips on Tuesday: Vinegar

I've posted several times about vinegar and some of the uses for it. A dear friend of mine emailed this past week to inform me of another use she found for vinegar.

From Lara:
After reading about the vinegar for fabric softener you got me thinking. I have used vinegar and water for odor removal....what else can I use it for??? So I started my research journey. Lots of course, but here's what I did!!! I shampooed my carpets!!!!!

We rented a Rug Doctor $32.00 (including attachment for stairs). A gallon of vinegar, $2.00 and a bottle of Simple Green about $3-$4.00. Did the whole house and it looks fantastic.

On the bad stains (entry way), we sprayed simple green directly on them. No stains in the entire house!!! It looks great and hopefully will not attract dirt like soap.Whole house shampooed $38.00!!!!!!! Who weeee. Of course there is our own labor.

Last time we did it ourselves at the old house it was over $100.00 with the rental, spotter, soap, defoamer, etc. Just wanted to share.

Thanks for the great info, Lara. Our carpets need cleaning, too. I'm just reluctant to use soap because of the recurring stains.

For those of you who aren't aware, soap attracts dirt. That's it's job. It attracts the dirt and takes it off our skin when we shower, off our clothes when we launder, etc. However, any soap residue (which can happen in carpet cleaning) is now a dirt magnet. It's attracting the dirt--which is it's job--we just don't like it attracted in the same spot where we just cleaned on our carpets.

Another note for even greater savings. If you go to http://www.coupons.com/, there is usually a $2 off coupon for Simple Green. Our local Dollar General has Simple Green for $2.50 (last time I checked) per bottle. Take your coupon and pay $0.50 for the entire bottle.