Best way to clean throw-up from carpet?

DD threw up her breakfast this morning all over her rocking horse and family room carpet...I have never been so thankful that they DIDN'T have blueberry pancakes!

It has only been cleaned up with water at this point...the heavy-duty cleaning will have to wait until I get home from work.

What would you recommend? My coworkers insist I should just go buy a steam vac (Bissel, Hoover, etc.) from Costco tonight...they promise I will need it a lot as the kids get older!

Any other input??

 

Mine were about your age when I figured out that I HAD to have a carpet cleaner and bought a bissel. I LOVE it! However if you don't want to go that route yet then I would pick up some oxy clean stuff. Test it on a corner of your carpet though incase it bleaches or bleeds the carpet.
I use the cleaner at least once a month and more if we have sickies or if we have a milk spill. GL--and I hope she's feeling better!

 

Our son recently threw up after eating a snack of blackberry, strawberry and blueberries and we used an excellent product called Folex. It cleaned the stains out of our cream carpeting very well with no marks left. I highly recommend it. I keep a few bottles of it around my house for emergencies like that. It has also got red wine, lasagne and blood out of carpets with little effort. It's non-toxic, non-flammable and odour free. I cannot think of a bad thing to say about it. Here is the website:

http://www.folexcompany.com/

 

I also have a Bissel carpet cleaner and it works well. In between carpet cleanings, for messes we use water with Resolve cleaner and that has gotten out a lot of stains here (pasta, throw up-cat and kid, soda, etc).

 

All good advice. I just wanted to add that after you get it cleaned if there is a lingering smell (which can sometimes be hard to get rid of), I have had a lot of luck with sprinkling the carpet liberally with baking soda & leaving it overnight and vacuuming it up the next morning.

 

We use Nature's Miracle for pet pee, poop, and vomit. It works well for messes created by humans, too. You can get it at PetCo.

 

We were renting and the first week we moved in, my 7 yr old sister spilled black paint on white carpet. We tried everything! Then, like 2 weeks later found Folex... I basically thought that the plainest looking bottle of stuff would be best. It took out that 2 week old black paint! Now, with the twins, last week Orion was having 'naked time' laying on a blanket. I literally just took off his diaper & stood up when he pooped. On the blanket & on the floor (so gross!). But the Folex took care of that, too!

 

My kids caught a stomach bug a few months back & vomitted all over our den carpet. We cleaned it up at the time, but it wasn't a really thorough job. Once everyone was well & we had more time to clean the carpet, nothing worked & there was a horrible stain. We wound up paying a place to come and professionally clean them.

 

Thanks for all the responses! I went to Costco and bought a Bissell steam vac...I was afraid to use too much of the cleaning solution that they include, so I diluted it 50/50 with water. Made a few passes over the area with the steam vac and decided to tackle it again later...I still had the rocking horse to deal with. This morning, I could still smell the wonderful throw-up smell on the carpet, so I doused the area with Nature's Miracle (had it on the shelf from the new puppy days!). Hopefully that will do the trick...


Now...the next issue is cleaning the plush rocking horse that took the brunt of the mess!! I didn't really want to deal with it, but my mother insisted I needed to make the time to try and clean it...whatever. She and my dad gave the kids the horses, so, of course, I felt guilty that I just wanted to chuck it!! So, at 10:30pm last night, I cut off the entire mane of the horse since it was caked with throw-up. I then tried wiping the stupid horse with Nature's Miracle and just got more and more disgusted with the whole mess. It doesn't look stained but it sure smells...DH suggested I just stuff it into a garbage bag and put it in the garage so that my mom can deal with it when they visit in April!

Any thoughts on dealing with the mess all over the plush horse??

 

I'm with you. If it was broken, she wouldn't expect you to keep it, would she? If it has been infested with puke, it's broken in my book! :ibiggrin:

 

I do have a steam cleaner that I love (bissel), but I have found that wipes are one of the best cleaners in the world. Even cheap wipes. I've cleaned ketchup out of cream carpet before! With throw-up I usually use paper towls, then wipes (or steam cleaner as needed) then a baking soda soak for odor, then vacuum. GL!

 

What if you put the horse in the bathtub and gave it a shampoo??

 

When my cousin was going through chemotherapy, his mom would use seltzer water to clean vomit with, I use vinegar & diluted dishsoap usually. Folex works really well too.

For the horse, I would:

Get very diluted dishsoap and put it in a squirt bottle (I save a few of the water bottles with the squirt nozzle for this purpose), get a stiff haired brush, squirt and scrub, squirt and scrub. When it's clean, rinse/squirt with water, let it dry, when dry, brush the fur.

I will let you in on a secret. Your kids are going to puke and and poop and puke and gross things are going to ooze out of them, so you should invest in some good non-toxic cleaning utensils, a bucket, a scrub brush, a squirt bottle, a spray bottle, some gloves, some Seltzer water and some Nature's Miracle. In fact, one of my friends who is a member here but not active, had both of her 4 month olds do a double-poo explosion on her couch last night (sorry I laughed at you Liz if you're reading)

If I had to throw away everything my kids puked on because I couldn't stomach the cleaning, they wouldn't have had anything, and I wouldn't have had anything left over after their reflux days. And we still wouldn't have some of their toys.