Can you use OxiClean and vinegar together for a homemade carpet cleaner? Can they damage your carpet? We use this homemade carpet cleaner with OxiClean for 5 years when We lived in an apartment. We cleaned the carpet about once a month. I just made sure the Oxiclean fully dissolved before running the cleaner.
After I was done, I ran the cleaner again with nothing but water to remove any leftover residue. This step is the most important for keeping the carpet cleaner longer. Any leftover residue will become sticky and hold in dirt, dust, pet hair, whatever. Doing this also makes the carpet soft. Vinegar also works very well, especially for those with pets.
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Homemade Carpet Cleaner with Oxiclean and Vinegar
A few months ago we decided to clean our colored carpet. It was very dirty due to all the traffic from the back door. I learned from a professional carpet cleaner a long time ago not to use soap to clean carpets, she says it causes them to be sticky. We knew we needed something more natural, so we decided on a combination of warm water, vinegar, and Oxy Clean.
2 1/2 cups of distilled white vinegar
2 scoops (4 tbsp) of Oxy-clean
Warm to hot water to the fill line on the tank.
NOTE: Although this mixture worked for our light colored carpet, I’m not sure about using Oxy Clean on darker colored carpets, so be sure to test it before you start just to be safe. Yes, there will be a slight vinegar odor, but it dissipates in about 24 hours time.
We use it with the Hoover Max Extract 60. I really like the spinning brushes on Hoover steam cleaners. I just received a Bissell Deep Clean Lift-Off Deluxe Pet that I am excited to try out. The Bissell cleans really well. I didn’t have to repeat cleaning as many times as I have to with the Hoover. However, Bissell is much more difficult to maneuver. The shape of the Bissell makes it more difficult to use. It is also heavier than the Hoover, which adds to the maneuverability issues.
You can see here how dirty our carpets were. The left side is the cleaned carpet and the right is still dirty. The light spot to the right is where I had cleaned up a pet stain earlier in the week.
Homemade Carpet Cleaner with Vinegar Oxiclean and Febreze
This carpet cleaning solution you may not need to use a carpet cleaner machine.
1 Cup Oxiclean
1 Cup Febreze
1 Cup distilled white vinegar
Mix them into shampooer tank and mix with hot water to fill the tank completely. This will not only clean your carpets it will also deodorize. It will smell slightly of vinegar until the carpet is dry.
Then will smell like Febreze. Mix together with a gallon of hot water and add to the machine. Any vinegar smell will fade away quickly, although my friend didn’t notice any smell at all. It’s worked great on dog stains and odors.
I use a scrub brush, dipped it into the solution and scrubbed my carpet. Then blot up the extra with a towel. It got a majority of the stains out but I had to scrub a bit hard. It also left little Oxiclean pellets behind, but they vacuumed up easily once they dried. So overall it worked pretty well on my carpet.
How To Cleaning Carpet with Oxiclean?
Notes: OxiClean cannot be used on wool, silk, leather or anything else that cannot be washed with water. It also is not recommended on rust and other metallic stains because of the oxidation process.
I had persistent carpet stains on my staircase. They were either spot of garlic butter sauce which comes with a pizza or drops of coffee with cream and sugar. The stains have been in the carpet so long I can no longer remember which are which, and I have used bleach, various carpet cleaners and Simple Green without success.
To spot remove carpet stains, the OxiClean label recommends dissolving an eighth of a scoop of powder into 16 ounces of warm or hot water.
I used an empty drinking water bottle with a convenient sports nozzle, so I could simply squirt the blend all over my stairs. Just as the instructions prescribed, I doused each spot and waited for 5-30 minutes. I then rinsed each spot with fresh water and blotted the excess moisture with a paper towel.
- Step 1: Clean your carpet with your steam cleaner with one scoop of OxiClean in the hot water. After you steam clean with OxiClean, you’ll look at your carpet and it will be miles better.
- Step 2: Get a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush and scrub the spots that didn’t come up.
- Step 3: Rinse your carpet with the steam cleaner. I rinse one time with just hot water in the cleaner. Then I go over it a second time with a few shakes of tea tree oil in the water in the steam cleaner. Tea tree oil is a natural anti-bacterial. Just awesome.
Some time ago, I painted my room dark gray, and a big glob of paint fell through a crack in my drop cloth. I mixed up another batch of OxiClean and squirted it on the gray part of my otherwise beige carpet.
After 5-30 minutes, I discovered that OxiClean had come through again even though there was a bit more scrubbing involved.
The only problem is that OxiClean got my carpet too clean. On the stairs and on the former paint spot, there were sparkling white patches that made an obvious stand against the wall to wall expanse of dingy floor covering.
Therefore, I recommend using OxiClean in tandem with a carpet cleaning machine. OxiClean can be mixed into yours. I have never had issues with the OxyClean turning my carpet strange colors or lightening in spots. The key with OxyClean is to use just enough. If you’re really nervous about the OxyClean, try a small area of the carpet.
Conclusion
When I to be shopping for new carpet , and the Expert carpet cleaning at the carpet store told me that it’s important when cleaning stains, to make sure you totally rinse the stained area after cleaning.
In other words, when using one of those water extraction type steam cleaners, to go over the cleaned area with clear water until you no longer see any of the soapy residue coming up. He said that if you leave a soap residue, it’s going to attract more dirt, and look dirty again. I really want to know more other natural carpet cleaning recipes please share them if you have one.