My mother’s day celebration officially ended at 3AM when Caroline started screaming “I threw up! I threw up!” and Andy started gagging and I started that time-honored tradition of stripping down a pukey child, running a bath, starting the laundry, finding the ginger ale, and asking myself why I married a man who can probably shoot a man dead if necessary but cannot, if his life depended on it, deal with vomit.
Still, I am lucky enough to live down the street from Clare and BJ Ambrose, owners of Ambrose Carpet. And as much as I wanted to call them (that’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it?), I didn’t. But in my fog, I did remember Clare’s hydrogen peroxide miracle elixir.
I learned this little tip during a cooking party at my house. We were making chicken in red wine sauce and we were supposed to “gently kneed” the Ziploc bag with all the ingredients inside. I decided to shake mine like a martini. It didn’t end well.
Clare swooped in, found my old, dilapidated bottle of peroxide, screwed a squirt bottle top into it (fits perfectly, FYI) and sprayed the carpet with a vengeance. The stain disappeared
! All of it.
Apparently hydrogen peroxide can conquer any organic stain: blood, wine, urine, mildewed water stains, and foods like fruit and, well, chicken in red wine sauce. Just be sure NOT to use this magic trick on natural fibers, such as wool or jute. But most carpets are made of a synthetic fiber – just like most kitchen spills involve food and most kid spills involve blood. So – spray away!
One last tip: if you have not yet found a mate, be picky – you probably won’t need a man to kill for you, but I promise you will be up in the middle of the night with a sick child more than once in your life. Think about it.