Last night, I fixed a late supper: a bowl of chili. I am heading over to sit on the couch to watch some TV and eat and the bowl of chili went flying across the living room. Well, I wish it had landed on my couch because my couch has insurance on it for spills, but no... only a tiny bit landed on the couch, the entire rest of the bowl exploded all over my light tan carpet.
So here I am at 8:30 pm on a Saturday night, in my PJs (yes, dinosaurs wear PJs) with nothing in my house that will clean up such a horrendous mess. Plus, my pocketbook isn't exactly full of extra cash to purchase a bunch of equipment for carpet cleaning, not to mention my little condo is too small to have extra machines around that I'm not using on a regular basis.
My first instinct was to go to Kmart (I don't do Wal-Mart) and I have a Sears credit card with zero balance on it. I go there and wander around the store trying to find the department that sells vacuums. Turns out they hide that department behind a giant wall of electronics. Have you noticed that new Kmarts have a lot of dead-end isles and weird places that make them hard to navigate? I have.
Anyway, I get there and they have a few options, the cheapest being about $90. The only one of those in stock is in a box that looks like they delivered it by dropping it out of a plane. I figure, I'd better get home and start cleaning as soon as possible so I grab it. When I get to the checkout, I tell the cashier that when the receipt prints out, I want her to write on the receipt that the box is severely damaged. She won't do it. All I want her to do is note that the box was damaged when I bought it -- just in case I have to bring it back -- so they don't give me a hassle at the service desk. She refuses. She doesn't know "if she can do that". So, I tell her I'm not making the purchase. Then she decides she COULD ask her supervisor. Of course the supervisor says it's no problem to make a note on the receipt. She offers for us to open the box right then, which I decline. I didn't feel that it was necessary, it was just an extra precaution.
Well, as I'm driving home, I realize I just spent over $120 (including cleaning solution) on an item I didn't really need but (hopefully) this one time. I also remembered I had a coupon for Lowe's for $20 off $100 purchase and an also-empty credit account with them. By now, it's almost 9 p.m. so I headed to Lowe's. They have similar devices (in uncrushed boxes) but they are about $30 more expensive (not the same device -- similar). Well, that still won't be great, so I head out and see the display for those rental machines. My mom rented one once when I was a kid and it seemed like such a hassle, of course we lived about 30 miles from the town where you rented them, so there was the drive time to consider. This place is only 5 minutes from my house. So for what turned out to be $50ish dollars I rented the machine, got 2 bottles of cleaner (waaaaay more cleaner than I needed). So (sorry to my neighbors) I ended up cleaning my carpets from 10 pm until about 1 am last night/this morning.
It seems like they could make those things a little easier to steer. I'm not expecting "Dyson technology", but it was not easy to maneuver. Luckily, it looks like it did a pretty good job. I feel like I can see the spot a little, but it's probably just because I went over it so many times right there that the carpet is roughed up there a little more. I still hate dropping $50 on clean up, but there weren't really a lot of cheaper options. I was not really wanting to own that little spot cleaner machine I bought at Kmart since I've owned one before that was barely functional.
So, today, I have to return both machines. Hopefully Kmart does not give me a hassle, but I don't think they will since I didn't even open the box.
Next time I make chili, I think I will lay out a tarp or eat it over the kitchen sink. I never did eat supper last night!
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