I’m not gonna lie. We have a lot of stains in our carpet. You would think that we have a small child for the amount of stains we have. I don’t understand… by the end of our tenure here, we had purchased 3 different surfaces for drinks, yet they always somehow ended up on the floor. My husband is guilty as charged for this offense, for fear an accident will short-circuit his laptop. Is it any wonder he’s afraid of accidents? Anyway… we have old stains, new stains, red stains, blue stains. Well, really they’re just brown. But at this point, we’re not really sure where each came from and what created the stain, or even if it was there before we got here, so I just don’t know how to treat them – except for the Coffee Stain.

Fearing that not even a carpet steamer would work on our Infamous Giant Coffee Stain (in which my toe hit a notebook sitting on the couch, which then fell to the floor, which then hit a mug of coffee on said floor, which then toppled to said floor), I decided to go at it myself to see just how bad it was… And let me tell you, I wish I took before/after shots. That jerk is G-O-N-E gone!! Well, it’s not perfect, but it’s a huge improvement. I was so excited that I shimmied around to the rest of the carpet trying the same method – coat with water, blot. coat with dish detergent, blot. coat with water, blot. vacuum.

Let’s just say I was unsuccessful with the other stains.

I had a good talk with Steph today about friendship. Afterward, I was thinking… what works to improve some may not work with others. We may put in all the effort we can, but sometimes, it just needs something different. And that’s okay. I’m not comparing friends to stains, really. But sometimes it’s easier to stick with our old methods of TLC rather than try to figure out what makes people tick (or, what gets the stain out). Maybe it’s worth it, though, because that before/after shot can be quite drastic.