Liz Goldsmith: Hi, I'm Liz Goldsmith, Family Resource Management professor at Florida State University and author of Green Cleaning books. We're talking about spot and stain removal of carpets using green methods. I'm using Home Made Green Cleaners. First rule is not to use bleach or ammonia. So none of these bleach of any kind, on any kind of carpet that is going to bring up white spots. So then you say, okay, what do I do? This product for example says, we disclose all ingredients. That's a good sign.

The next part is what I call the Titanic Test, which is finding out about your carpet and how much it absorbs. I've got three samples here. The first one is nylon. It's been treated with a stain protector. So I'm going to put that in fiber down. Next, we're going to put in polyester. This has had some stain treatment. The last one is polyester without any stain treatment at all. We're going to watch how long it takes the titanic test to go to the bottom. So you can see right away, the polyester without any stain treatment right to the bottom. That's going to be a harder stain carpet for you to clean with anything. The other ones are still competing. I feel like I've got boat A and boat B. We'll have to watch. Wait a few minutes to see which one is going to sink first.

Okay, so this is the one with nylon with a good stain treatment. See, how it's beating up and resisting. So if I was a homeowner, this would be a very good choice. The next one is the polyester with some stain treatment, but look at how much more it absorbed. So it didn't sink, but it was trying. I'm going to dig down for the bottom sample, which is a dud, which is polyester, absolutely, no treatment. And most carpets you get now-a-days, wall to wall is going to have treatment. So don't worry, this probably isn't going to be even something you can easily buy. But look at how much it has absorbed and how hard that's going to be to clean. I would definitely say you want stain resistant carpet. That's what I've got a piece up here. I'm going to stain it with three different substances, and try and take it off with my green cleaner.

So first, there is some red wine. Then, I'm going to do another one grape juice. The last one I'm going to do is ketchup. The next part, which is the first step of removal would be to try and spoon some off if you could. So I'm going to take as much of the solid up as I can and remove it. This would be for a pet stain or something like that as well.

Next, I'm going to take white terrycloth. This is 100% cotton. The solution I'm going to use is one-and-half teaspoon of dishwashing liquid, green in this case, to a cup of warm water. I'm going to dip a white cloth in. I'm going to start working around the stain. This one is grape juice, which is a classic problem. I'm going from the outside in, and notice how it is picking up, so it's working.

I want to take another cloth on that and put it in clear water, and work that a little more. So it's coming up. See the clear water is not picking it up the way that the solution is. Now what I'm going to do at this point is finish it off with the cool water on all three stains, starting with the wine. I'm going to put more pressure on the epicenter, where we seem to have a problem. That seems to be working for that one as well. That one is essentially gone.

Well, this is a result of the green cleaning homemade cleaner that I did. I had a wine stain, grape stain, ketchup and they all came up pretty well. They're not totally dry yet, I am still blotting, but it worked just using the simplest greenest thing, which is a half teaspoon dishwashing liquid and a cup of water. So it's very easy, and then using clear water to blot, and then finishing off with the dry with the clean white towel. Up next, Heidi is going to talk abut commercial green cleaners.