On this beautiful 2nd day of fall, we decided that it was time to deep clean the living room rug.

This rug takes a lot of abuse… mainly from our beloved Labrador, who has severe anxiety issues when we leave the house. She is seven years old and the sweetest dog, but does not like to be left alone. She is also very protective of all of us in a motherly way. Back to not being left alone…she has DESTROYED, not one, not two, but THREE metal CRATES and gotten out of them all. So we decided it is not worth wasting money on any more crates, besides she may end up hurting herself trying to get out of them. We have tried anxiety meds. Lets just say they make her make a bigger mess that we have to clean up. If we lock her in a room, she destroys the room. Our best bet is to let her have free roam of the house and hope she takes a nap….but if we are gone longer than she thinks we should be….we have a mess to clean up. She is usually good with church times, because she knows when we will be home. Most of the time, someone is home all the time all other times.

Now, back to the rug! This video caught my eye on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2425974514349209 So I thought, If they clean expensive rugs like this with a power washer, I surely can clean my $30 Ollies rug the same way! I showed the video to Jeff, and he AGREED.

So… On this beautiful, breezy, sunny, 2nd day of fall, we pulled out a tarp, and the rug, and got a bottle of laundry soap that only had a tiny bit in the bottom. Sam brought out a stiff broom from the garage.

We laid the tarp, and then the rug, on our back hill. I filled the soap bottle all the way with water from the hose, and swished it around. Sam wet the rug really well with the hose.

Then I carefully poured the soap all over the rug so that the rug was completely covered. Sam used the broom to work in the soap and loosen the dirt. Then we sprayed it down with water.

We decided not to use the pressure washer, and just use the highest pressure setting out the garden hose. Starting at the top and working our way down, we sprayed to remove as much soap as we could. Then Sam used the broom again to kind-of squeegee the water, working from the top down. We repeated this process a few times until we felt most of the soap was gone. Anything that remains, we hope will dry and be vacuumed up later.

Finally, Jeff and Sam rolled the rug up and carried it over to the clothes line and hung it over the end poll to dry. We didn’t want to risk breaking the lines, so the end post will do well. It was still dripping with lots of water….so may take a day or so to dry.

The rug looks really great.