Get the Blood Out of the Carpet!

Not all carpet fibers are created equal. Natural fibers tend to cling to stains as if they were best friends. But, even best friends can call it quits. So, before you zap the stain with any kind of chemical cleaners, try to get the blood out with cold water.

Using hot water will bond your carpet and the stain together until death they do part, which is why you want to use only cold. A little cold water has been known to interrupt this process, but make sure you just use a little at a time. You don’t want that bloody stain to spread.

Now, you can stand there with your cup of cold water and a stack of clean white towels dabbing at the stain for a hour or so, or, if you are like me and have much better things to do, take the easy way out. No, I don’t mean recruit your husband to work on the stain!

One of my all-time favorite appliances is the SpotBot by Bissell. Just set it over the stain, turn it on and walk away. It will beep when the stain is gone. It will keep beeping until you send one of your kids to turn it off.

So if the stain is still hanging all over the carpet, now you have to get tough. Take a little Fuller 86 mixed with a bit of cold water to make a paste. Then, gently rub it into the stain. But, be gentle. We all know breaking up is hard to do and your rug is no different. If it gets damaged it will pick up another stain on the rebound, and we all know how that ends.

Now get more cold water and another stack of clean, white towels. You do have more on your shelf, don’t you. Look in the back. Millie the Maid gave you a lifetime supply as a wedding gift, don’t you remember? Sorry, I digress. Get some kind of clean towel you won’t mind ruining with blood and take the next 45 minutes of your life to blot the water and blood out of the carpet. Or, if you’re like me, haul out your Bissell SpotBot, put your kid on spot duty and you run along to chat with your friends online.

By now, that blood stain should be on its way down the drain to a nice vacation at the ocean. The fresher the blood stain, the easier it will be to get it out of your carpet’s life without doing much damage. Unfortunately, old, dried up blood stains are probably there for good. Maybe you can move the carpet and the stain into the apartment over your garage...unless, of course, our mother-in-law is already using it.