Carpet Cleaner with Oxiclean

This one was sent to me via email and when I read the ingredients I was pretty excited. (Yes my life is pretty dull when I get excited about cleaning products.  Just last night I had a dream that I cleaned my whole house and I woke up really happy. I think I need a new hobby that doesn't involve cleaning)

  I really like the DIY carpet cleaner I have been using, but because it has hydrogen peroxide in it, it can bleach some darker carpets. 

Carpet Shampoo Solution
1 Cup Oxiclean 
1 Cup Febreze
1 Cup distilled white vinegar

Directions:
Pour contents into shampooer tank and mix with hot water to fill tank completely. This will not only clean your carpets it will also deodorize. It will smell slightly of vinegar until the carpet is dry, then will smell like Febreze.

I didn't have any Febreze so I made my own.  I mixed all the ingredients together and got a fun little surprise.

Apparently Oxiclean and vinegar have a fun chemical reaction.  Fortunately the bubbles popped very quickly so I didn't have to wait long to continue with the experiment. 

The directions say to pour the mixture into a shampoo tank then fill the rest with hot water.  Because each shampoo tank is a different size I assume this can change the outcome.  My carpet cleaner is a little hand held one so I poured in half the solution, then filled up the rest with hot water.  

 The Verdict: Inconclusive.  Let me explain why.  I set up my carpet cleaner then pressed the button to spray the solution.  I got one good squirt, then a little dribble, then nothing.  The hose was completely clogged and nothing would come out.  Of course I immediately blamed it on the DIY solution I just put in (ignoring the fact that I've only used DIY products in that machine) then I got online to see what I could do about it. 

Apparently getting a clogged hose after about a year is very common with the particular brand I have, even if you only use the carpet cleaning solution that comes with the machine.  So I guess the homemade solutions aren't to blame. 

I found a tutorial online about unclogging the hose and got to work. As I was using the needle nose pliers to unclasp the hose, my hand slipped and I pierced a hole all the way through the hose.  The lovely un-lady like outburst I had sent our skittish dog scurrying to the other room.  Sorry Bud.

So now I had a new carpet cleaning solution just begging to be tested, and no machine.  Time to get old school.

I found a scrub brush, dipped it into the solution and scrubbed my carpet.  Then blotted up the extra with a towel. 

Before

After

 It got a majority of the stains out but I had to scrub a bit hard. It also left little Oxiclean pellets behind, but they vacuumed up easily once they dried.

 I then tried a spot on the couch (I have no idea what it is, it just appeared one day) and it didn't even lighten it.

 So over all it worked pretty good on my carpet.  I like to think that it would work great in a carpet cleaner, but it will be a while until I can buy a new one and test it out.

If you have tried this solution before I would love to hear what you think about it.