Mio Rug Disastero

Meet the culprit

I had to have some of these to flavor my water, they are tasty...a change from Crystal Light. They were sitting on my countertop....they were stolen!

Meet the criminal

She is completely obsessed with food. She was downstairs alone, sleeping, I thought. Then I heard the familiar sound of her chewing on something. I didn't even yell this time, just went down calmly to see what she had. Then all hell broke loose! It looked like a murder scene on my brand new Pottery Barn RUG!! She had picked the strawberry watermelon flavor, taken it over to the living room to enjoy. It looked like the bottle exploded.

 I did explode! She RAN not walked to her kennel and stayed for a looooong time.

I acted quick, ran for towels, soaked up what was there, then ran for my handy dandy carpet cleaners

This is the first sisal rug I have ever owned and I knew nothing about cleaning natural fiber rugs. I was in a panic, I was angry, and I was crying so much I could hardly see the stains through my tears. I blotted with cleaner,  I tried Folex first, this stuff works every time, NOT this time. Then I went for the OxyClean, it didn't work either.

Here is what is left

I worked hard, over an hour trying to get the stains out. Proof...check out all these red soaked towels...

I read that Host Carpet Cleaning may work, this is a dry carpet cleaning system. I went to a vacuum and carpet cleaning store today and they recommended a stain treatment specially formulated for red stains such as red wine. Yeah, this didn't work either!

So this corner of the rug

will have a new home under the green chair here

I was really mad and really upset about the whole thing and Abbie knew it. She stayed away for a long time, I was so upset and mad at her because she never learns to stay off the countertop. And she ruined my rug. But every time I started to feel the anger build up I saw this image her...

and I realized this must mean I really love her.


I learned that the OxyClean probably discolored the fibers when I tried to clean, you can see in the pictures. It didn't bleach it, but turned it more of a gold. I learned there is not much you can do to remove liquid stains from a natural fiber rug. I may try the dry cleaner later, but I am not very hopeful...no more stain is releasing from the fibers at this point. So the whole idea of buying a fiber rug because it will hide stains Abbie drags in was pretty pointless. :(

If anyone knows something that may work, I'd love to know.