how to remove lipstick from your carpet with homemade carpet cleaner

If you're following along on Instagram, you know that we had a bit of a snafu a couple of weeks ago. My sweet, loving, spirited (which is to say, maddening) 3 year old broke out of his room during "nap time," grabbed 2 freebie tubes of Clinique lipstick from my makeup drawer, and went to town ALL OVER MY CARPET.

who, me?

And if you're joining us from Pinterest, I'm so so sorry that your carpet looks like a horror film. But friend, there is hope!


At first, I thought it was blood. I was quickly relieved (and then enraged) that it wasn't. I knew I needed to act quickly if I had any chance of saving my carpet.

I took to Pinterest - because, really, what else do we do anymore - and found several posts with suggestions. The only problem was, all of those posts were about removing a tiny smudge of lipstick, not two whole effing tubes.

For the first hour I tried a solution of warm water with a squirt of Dawn dish soap. When we spilled a pint of paint on our carpet last year, that did the trick. While it was technically working, at this rate I would still be working on this carpet when my 401K vested at age 59 1/2.

New plan - grab my homemade Shout and see if that worked. It's gotten every imaginable stain out of our clothes (and with 2 kids, a dog, a cat, and the amount of red wine we drink, that's saying something). And praise the Lord above, it worked. We got the rest of that hideous stain out in an hour. See?!

Go ahead and whip up a batch - or two or three - of this miracle elixir. 

DISCLAIMER: Know that there is a chance it could lighten up your carpet since it contains peroxide. In my case, I was willing to take the risk. Lighter beige carpet is much better than carpet that looks like a crime scene. I didn't have any lightening issues, but you might.

Also, apologies in advance for the horrible photo quality. For some strange reason I just couldn't bring myself to bust out the DSLR to document this historic event.

homemade shout and carpet cleaner

RECIPE: Combine 1 part Dawn dish soap and 2 parts hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle. Shake well. That's it.

FOR SPOT TREATING CLOTHES: Spray the stain on the garment liberally. Wash as normal.

FOR REMOVING IMPOSSIBLE STAINS FROM CARPET: This is slightly more involved.

Step 1: Spray the stained area liberally. With a white junk towel, begin working the stain in a circular motion, working from the outside of the stain towards the inside. If you didn't have biceps before, you will now. It should foam up, like this.

Step 2: Take another rag and soak it in warm water. Ring it out. Go over the area with the water, dunking and redunking in water as needed to lift up the stain. It's going to get really foamy now. Change out your water regularly.

Step 3: I would then highly recommend going over the area with a Bissel Spot Bot or similar wet vac. Don't add any cleaner to it, just fill with water. You want to get as much of the detergent out as possible. Detergent left in your carpet fiber will attract more dirt to the area. True story. That's why when you use one of those carpet cleaning services, you have to have them back every 3 months. They leave detergent in the carpet, it gets dirty again, and then you call them again. Tricky, tricky.

If you don't have a wet vac, then get a bunch of towels, set them over the area, and walk all over them to get as much water out as possible.

Hopefully you will never have an Iwo Jima looking mess on your carpet to deal with, but just in case, this might save your life.

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