Grose Carpets and Soap Scum

I've found that the best thing to help keep carpets clean is a nice length of carpet runner inside the door. It helps to get the gunk off the shoes before they hit the carpet. Taking shoes off at the door is the best. Also, have heard that al lof times that carpets getting that dirty looking that fast is because they have a lot of soap residue in them. Try getting mom's carpet machine again. Put a 1/4 cup of vinegar in the tank with the water...NO soap. See if maybe that helps. I have to agree with the suggestions about baking soda and vinegar for the tub. Added benefit is that it can help to clear out soap residue in the drains also!

First of all, thank you and your husband for serving our country. Your support of him as a soldier is invaluable.

I agree with cleaning the carpets with water or steam only. Soap leaves an oily residue in the carpet that dirt sticks to.

Mr. Clean Magic Erasers work wonders on soap scum. They are expensive, but don't buy the store brand. It will take some serious elbow grease to get through the soap scum, no matter what you use. After you remove the soap scum, do your weekly cleaning with vinegar and baking soda, or get some Method brand tub and tile cleaner. The Method products are non-toxic and gentler on the environment than bleach, Comet, Lysol, etc. and you can buy them at Target.

Make a no shoes in the house rule! It helps tremendously! Have your tried a bleach based cleaner in your tub?

Time for a shoes-off policy in the house, cheap carpet is going to show every little thing

Shoes off helps, but I would definately do a water only or water/vinegar solution, no soap. If it has too much soap in the carpet it becomes a magnet for dirt. Also put hot water in the machine, hot water works way better than cold water. Some stains you will never be able to get rid of because they leach back up from the padding under the carpet.

As far as soap scum goes, I have always had great results with CLR and a scrub brush, just make sure to ventilate the room while cleaning with a window or fan, it will help since it is strong.

We are military as well. Don't spend a dime on professional carpet cleaning. It will look great for about 2-3 months, then look just as bad as before. Do what you can with a borrowed steam cleaner (use as little soap as possible...the more soap you add the more dirt will stick to the carpet later) or rent one from Wal-Mart. Put some throw rugs down if you can afford it and try to get the family to start taking shoes off at the door before you come in.

Mr. Clean Magic Erasers work great...they sell them at the Commissary for a good price. Just be careful around kids. Those things don't seem to affect adult skin, but little kids can get SERIOUS burns from touching them.

The carpets I am still battling, but the soap scum? It depends on what you mean. If you are talking hard water stains, I've tried everything and have finally given up. If you are talking true soap scum (soap deposits and shed body cells-gross, I know) plain old DAWN dishsoap works the best! After all, it is formulated to fight grease and oil, which is what most soap scum consists of. I learned this off of the BBC show "How clean is your house?"

well, there are a few things. I buy all of our stuff from an online club that has natural stuff and it is awesome and really pretty cheap! they have this awesome 3 in one cleaner that you can use for a ton of stuff, but i use it a lot as spot treatment on the carpets and furniture. we have a light beige/gray carpet and it shows everything. but the spot treatment has taken red taco sauce out of the carpet, dirt, chocolate milk and it even takes black pen off of our tan micro-fiber sofa. oh, and it also just took purple marker (NOT washable!) off of our tempur pedic mattress over the weekend. i go through one big bottle every month because i use it for so much. They also have a really good tub and tile cleaner. its really cheap and it is strong enough that it can clean an old nasty penny and make it look new, but it doesnt have strong fumes or eat through your skin with chemicals or anything. I use it to clean my jewlery too because it is really gentle to the skin. (speaking of which, i need to do that today. my engagement ring is looking pretty nasty.) i also use their everyday shower cleaner to keep the nasty from building up too much in the shower and tub. also very cheap! the company is awesome too, because when you are a cutstomer, the give you an option to work from home with them. I dont know if that would be something you would want at all either, but its definitely a nice option. lol. anywho, message me if you want. i dont know if its spamming to post websites! lol.

S.,
I have found that once you have new carpeting professionally cleaned, it goes down hill from there! Each time it takes less and less time to get filthy again....sigh. My best thought for you is to get some area rugs and cover the carpet as best you can in the main areas. It will spruce up the look and cover the bad parts well. Look at discount stores for deals.

As for the soap scum in your tub...4 words: Mr. Clean Magic Erasers! Add a spray cleaner first (I like the Green Clorox spray) and SCRUB. Those suckers get just about anything off of anything. And each time will be easier--try to do once per week. Good luck!

Baking soda works REALLY well on soap scum. I pour a little in the tub with some water or vinegar (enough to get it damp) and use a sponge to rub the baking soda around. I do it once a week so it's really easy. I used to be a sucker for cleaning products and would try all kinds of things but I've never found anything that works better on soap scum than baking soda and I've switched to using mostly baking soda and vinegar (plus the occasional cap full of bleach and some enzyme cleaner) to clean my house because not only is it cheap it works WAY better than anything else I've tried AND I don't have to worry about my kid or the pets eating it.
As for the carpets this stuff: http://www.amazon.com/Stain-Eliminator-Better-Natures-Mir...
works really well on fabric stains and can be used in steam cleaners for the carpet. I use it for laundry and all sorts of stuff, works very well on cat pee for instance.