I don’t mean to turn Happy Homemaker on you, but two household issues have come up this week that warrant sharing, in case my experiences can save you money.

First of all, I thought my year-old dishwasher was broken.  All of a sudden our dishes had to be washed and re-washed…every cycle of the dishwasher leaving us with more and more disgusting spots and grime left on everything.  There was no gradual decline here…one load was fine, and without warning, the next subsequent washing cycles sucked.  Our dishwasher detergent was the same brand we’ve always bought, so we didn’t see any issues there.  We abandoned our stack-it-to-the-gills mentality and made sure every dish had plenty of access to the jets, to no avail.

Just when I was about to schedule an appointment with a repair company, I bought a new bottle of detergent (same brand) and we suddenly had crystal-clear dishes again.  Would you believe we almost paid for a dishwasher repair service and our only problem was a defective batch of soap??

My second little tidbit involves something that probably 93% of my clients complain about: carpet stains.  A recent client took over an office space that was formerly occupied by a local tea bottler, and had the carpet stains to prove it.  There was one giant blotch in their lobby that I was asked to disguise with a plant, but having a plant large enough to distract you from the stain would’ve impeded traffic flow, so I thought I’d try our latest revolving-door-of-carpet-stain-removers purchase.

spot_shot_carpet_cleaner

And now as I talk about a carpet stain remover, I feel like I should have some kind of SHAM-WOW! voice.

Y’all, this stain must’ve been forever old.  I sprayed this stuff on the stain, blotted it a with a paper towel, and the paper towel turned tea-brown.  It was actually lifting the old stain from the carpet.  Effortlessly.

Here’s hoping it was, in fact, tea and Not. Something. Gross.

So if you’ve been contemplating ripping out stained carpet but hate the thought of spending that dough, I highly recommend you spend a few bucks on a bottle of this stuff and see if you can’t salvage your rug.

And no, I haven’t been paid to recommend Spot Shot.  But I can tell you that with a five-year old, a dog and a cat, and no money for carpet replacement for at least another year, I won’t be buying any other brand of carpet cleaner anytime soon.