Imagine this: It’s Friday night. The work week has been hectic and all you want to do for the next two days is relax and unwind. You go to the fridge, uncork your favorite bottle of red wine and pour yourself a nice cool glass. You walk back to the living room, sit on the couch, careful not to spill all the red goodness that’s inside your cup. You place the cup at your feet and start watching your favorite show. You reach down to get the cup to take a sip, but, you accidentally knock the cup over. You watch in slow motion as the cup falls to the floor, red wine soaking through your carpet, just like your tears will soon be. In your head, you’re thinking about all the places you went wrong and how you could’ve possibly prevented this. So many thoughts flash through your mind as the red wine soaks into your light-colored carpet. In one sweeping motion you grab the cup, take it to the kitchen, and then you go to the linen closet to get a towel. Towel in hand you go back to the living room and stare at the stain, hoping it picks itself up. “Now what?” You think while staring at the stain. This question has plagued many red wine drinkers for years.
There are many methods that can be used to clean the wine from the carpet. It’s a lot easier to clean the carpet if it’s still wet. Letting the stain dry to clean it makes it harder to clean because the stain has already set. One method I have found to be extremely helpful and easy to do, is the baking soda method. So the ingredients you will need to perform this method successfully is:
- A dry sponge
- a towel
- A bowl
- Baking soda
- Water
- A cloth
- A book or something you don’t mind getting a little wet
First, you use the sponge to blot up the wine. You want to make sure you blot the wine stain and not rub it because rubbing it forces it deeper into the fabric of the carpet. Make sure you wring out the sponge if it gets too wet, you don’t want to re-soak the area with the same wine you are tying to get up.
Next, you want to apply a baking soda paste to the stained area. To make the paste in a bowl you want to add one cup of baking soda to two cups of water. You can use more or less of these ingredients, usually it depends on the size of the stain and since we only spilled a cup of wine, the stain isn’t super big. After that, you want to place a cloth over the paste mixture on the carpet and finally, you want to place a book on the cloth. What this does is it allows the cloth to absorb the moisture from the carpet, bringing along with it the stain. You want to be sure to let it sit overnight.
In the morning, you want to remove the cloth and vacuum the baking soda. There should be NO evidence of having spilled wine the night before. The stain will be gone! You can go about your day, knowing that that stain is now a distant memory, plus you will know what to in the future.
Essentially Happy 