OUT STUPID SPOT!! (because my kids would scold me if I was true to the Shakespeare quote)

Do you see that big red juice stain on my carpet?

It's still wet in the picture -- now that it is dry you can't see any
difference between the sections of carpet.

Neither do I.

YIPPEE!!!!

For years I have had three nasty red juice stains on the carpet in my basement (my upstairs carpet is forty year old maroon so there is no way to tell if it is stained because it looks nasty no matter what  we just ignore it). 

Never mind that we have had a blanket "no eating/drinking in the basement" rule since pretty much the day we moved in, juice still manages to somehow mysteriously find its way into the basement and it also manages to escape its container and find a new home on my light tan, speckled carpet. Grrrrr.

These were huge (because no one spills only a half cup of juice at our house...go big or go home!), glaring eyesores that I eventually covered with an ugly rug so that I didn't have to stare at them all the time. 

Over the years I have tried -- no kidding -- dozens of different cleaning products and concoctions to try to remove the stains.  I have spent HOURS scrubbing and wiping and soaking and just trying to get the nasty monsters to leave.

Enter Pinterest (no I am not a Pinterest addict, I can quit any time).

Anyway, when a new solution showed up on Pinterest I was skeptical (that may be the understatement of the year).  I did not re pin it because I was sure it was a lie.  I did not bother to take "before" pictures because I was pretty much sure that this solution would not work. 

But I was wrong.

Sometimes I love it when I'm wrong.

So, for any of you who have carpets plagued by red juice stains, here's how I saw the death of mine.

1. Mix 1 cup ammonia and 1 cup water then saturate the stain with the mixture.

2. Cover the stain with a white towel (I am told colored towels will bleed color into your carpet).

3. Use a piping hot iron to go back and forth over the towel covered stain and watch as the juice seeps out of your carpet and into your towel.

I did have to reapply the ammonia mix and re steam with the towel/iron several times before the stains went away and I spent about an hour working on them...but they did actually go away.  I'm not talking about the kind of vanish where if you squint and dim the lights and blur your vision then you can't really see them anymore, I mean they are GONE.

I love it.

(To see the instructions from Pinterest that saved my carpet related sanity, click this link.)