Every Dead Carpet

 Title reference: "Every Dead Thing" by John Connolly

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This weekend I had a party at home. Tate, my soon to be room-mate, made sure he invited over everyone he knew, both from work and the University. And, as it usually happens, all of our guests brought someone else with them. Cousins, brothers, sisters, friends & lovers. They all gathered to drink and dance and scream... And, unfortunately, to break and spill things. You know how wild those parties can get, don't you? Beer on the carpet. Wine all over the furniture. Chinese food in my bed... And for the life of me I can't remember how it got there! It's kind of like that old fairytale about the little bears. "Someone's eaten in my bed"... And they definetely weren't familiar with the concept of chewing with your mouth closed!

Anyway, after all the guests finally managed to drag themselves out of the house, some on two legs, other on four or three (it was an umbrella), me and Tate were left with the task of cleaning and putting everything back together. So, where do 2 guys with a heavy hangover find the inspiration to clean the spots off their carpet? Easy enough. You google carpet cleaning and see what will come out of it. The best thing to do is to go and call a carpet cleaning London company, as there is a wide assortment of them on the net and, from what I could gather, they really do make miracles.

2nd choice is to read one of those "Do it yourself" articles and hope that you'll be sober enough and smart enough to actually follow the instructions correctly and rub the spots off your good ol' carpet! Tate surfed the Net for half an hour and came up with an online article on how to remove spots off your carpet. Now, it really didn't say anything about beer, wine or Chinese, but hey - we're capable lands, so we'd manage with a little imagination! And if we don't...

Remember choice number 1?

Anyway, that o-so-useful article that Tate provided, before passing out on the couch, signified (yes, I do no more complicated words. What did you expect?) that there are 4 major carpet killers (hence the name of the post!). Surprisingly, it turned out that water is the first and basic one. Well, not all water's a killer, of course. It depends on where it came from! Rain or water from a pipe leak are considered sanitary, where as an overflowing toilet... Not so much! (And... gross!) But if your house gets flooded by raw sewage or groundwater, than your carpet's dead, man. No salvaging this time! Luckily, beer does not qualify as groundwater... As far as I know, at least.

Dirt is the 2nd carpet killer. It is to carpets what Dexter Morgan is to ordinary psychos! The "D" is quite a coincidence, isn't it? Anyway, dirt can damage the fabrics of the carpet, so investing in a good vacuum cleaner with rotating bushes might be a wise idea! I'm already thinking of bullying Tate into buying one... Though which one of us is gonna' use it is debatable!

Stains (what I was looking for! Woo-hoo!) are the 3rd killer on this dead row. And dealing with them is science... Or science-fiction, if you're as bad a cleaner as I am! Whatever the case, apparently, the important thing is to catch the stain before it has time to set. Which, I dare say, means we're in for calling a professional... I'm fairly certain a whole night is time enough for a stain to settle in the carpet! O, man!

Mold or mildew are the "Bonny & Clyde" duo of carpet killers, but I'll make a wild guess and say I'm not dealing with either of them now!

So, what's the one thing left to do now?

1. Kick Tate off the couch to wake up. Enough lazing off for one morning!

2. Call a professional carpet cleaning London based company. No matter the cost, it will be this much cheaper than buying a new carpet!

And spreading an old rug on the floor would simply not do! Period.