How to Clean a Wool Flat Weave Rug

You know when something happens and circumstances dictate you learn (or try to do) something that you thought not really possible? Well that happened when an adorably curious toddler of mine made a disaster of our living room while I was showering. His weapon of choice? Chocolate milk. He managed to get out AND OPEN two containers of chocolate milk...all over the living room. He dumped them all over the couch and chairs. You could tell he even rubbed the chocolate milk around with his hands. It was also all over the floor and rug. I wanted to cry. I also wanted to blame my brother, who got the chocolate milk for the kids...as if it was really his fault. After several deep breaths, I decided to tackle the disaster.

Knowing the rug would be ruined if I didn't do anything, I knew I had to do something, even if it ruined the rug in the end. After all, the rug would be ruined if I did nothing anyway. I thought about washing it in the washing machine, but it was too big. I did some googling and read things about blotting the stains our, which made me want to both laugh and cry at the same time. These people obviously didn't know the disaster my rug was. Then there were the people that mentioned professional cleaning, which would have probably cost just as much or even more than the rug cost initially, so didn't make sense to me. In the end, I found someone mention using woolite on their rug, so I went with that.

I drug the rug in the backyard, on the concrete. First I hosed it off. Using a pretty hard spray, I was actually able to get more stains and chocolate milk our than I expected. Next I used shout and sprayed it all over the rug on the stains. I let that sit for 20 minutes before hosing off the rug again. Then I made a mixture of woolite and water, took a rag and lightly rubbed the whole rug. On some stains, I scrubbed a bit. I let that sit for 30 minutes before washing the rug off again.

Everything I read said not to let a rug dry in the sun, as it would fade it. But I did it anyway. Given that we've owned the rug for about two years and have never cleaned it, I wasn't super covered about fading. I actually think the sun helped get even more stains out.

When it was finally dry, which I did flip it after I felt the one side was dry, I was pleasantly surprised how clean it looked. It actually made me wonder why I hadn't attempted to clean it sooner. But I guess now I know.

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