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Out, Damned Spot! Out, I Say...
An Endorsement

Okay, Lady Macbeth wasn't with me — but if she had been, I might have borrowed the knife. The incident at hand involved my brand new SUV, the one with the brand new light tan carpet. As I came to a stop on the very steep hill on 82nd Street at the intersection with Fall Creek near Geist, I heard the bottle slip. There was just a light whooshing sound as the bottle pushed open the lid of a wine of the month club box. Then there was the gentle tinkling sound as it hit the seat frame on its way to the carpet. As I said a silent prayer that it was the white wine bottle that broke, I looked down and saw the little river of red wine flowing beside my seat, trying to make its way to the gas pedal. And it was not just any red wine. It was a bottle of one of Sparky Marquis biggest, reddest Cabernet Shiraz blends — you know, one of those huge Aussie wines that looks black in your glass and even darker on light tan carpet.

By the time I got home, it had soaked in from the back to the front and my carpet was a lovely shade of purple. It took two retired bath towels to soak up the mess, leaving my carpet a rosy shade of garnet. Forty-five minutes and an entire bottle of Wine Away later, I had brought the hue to a light pink, where it stubbornly remained.

After a week of wanting to kick myself every time I opened the driver's door and saw the carpet, I remembered a product that a reader had recommended a few years ago... the last time I wrote a piece about spot removal. It's called Oxi Clean and Linda had bought a jar then, but we had never tried it. I mixed the solution, put it in a spray bottle and sprayed down the stains. When I came back twenty minutes later the pink stains were gone! I blotted it with a white towel and when I pressed hard I soaked up a light brown liquid from beneath the pile. I know that we sell Wine Away and have used it for years, but this stuff really works! I can actually get in my truck now without wanting to scream.

You can buy it online at http://www.oxiclean.com/ or wherever household cleaners are sold. Let me know what you think!

January 31, 2007