Ballseye The Happy Homemaker...

...or so you might believe after the amazing feat of wax removal I did from my ears basement carpet today. It seems that last week, someone lit a large candle, but had placed it only in a shallow dish, atop our entertainment center in the basement. I thought nothing of it when I later went down into the cellar to watch the tube for a bit. Never gave even a small thought to the dish being too shallow that is, I did know the candle was burning and enjoyed its rose scented aroma.

Well as things would have it, I fell asleep on the couch. When I awoke in the morning, the candle, what was left of it, was still burning. As it turned out, it had a hole melted in its side, and the melted wax had run out of it, into and overflowing the dish, onto the top of the entertainment center, and down over the front of it onto the floor. Lucky me there was no fire. Unlucky me though because now I took the blame for htis mess, and I had not put the candle in that small dish, nor had I lit it. I did not blow it out either, but I often let candles burn all night, ones that I have placed into a proper candle holder for such. Oh well, today, after about a week of procrastination, and waiting to see if my eager as a beaver son Brendan would do anything to clean it up, I got down to business, and that was carpet cleaning 303. Yes this was advanced stuff therefore that 303 designation instead of 101 or 202. Lucky for me I watch those two English birds on the BBC channel. You know them don't you? Kim Woodburn and Aggie MacKenzie who do the show - How Clean is Your House. I thought I remembered something about using an iron to clean the wax up, but I'd be darned if I could remember the method. So what to do but to check on the Internet! I found two sets of instructions, both very similar in nature. In essence each said to scrape off as much wax as possible without damaging the carpet. Then to warm up the clothes iron, take a clean cloth, place it over the mess, and iron over the cloth until the wax melted and could be soaked up into the cloth. Repeat as needed until there is no more wax. Okay, I tried it, but I decided that if I would try it to try it with minimal heat first, and then increase the heat, instead of setting the iron on high steam heat right off. At the minimum setting it did little good, so I then set my iron at about the halfway mark for heat. Just under the lowest steam seeting on mine. I ironed over the cloth that was laid above the top of the mess, then took a peek, and as things would have it, most of the wax appeared to be gone. I could see some of it in the cloth, but surely some must have drained further into the carpet. I didn't and don't care, I went at it again. Then a third and final time, and it looked as good as new.

My carpet is nylon. It can melt, and that is why I started at a low heat setting and worked up. The cloth between the carpet and iron probably helps prevent damage to the carpet, but I would think you need to be very carefuul if you try this, not to burn or melt the carpet fibers (or yourself). As for the cloth, I used an old terry cloth cotton towel.

Right now, all candles have been removed from our basement, incense sticks too. I would hate to wake up choking on smoke some night after falling asleep while watching the Twilight Zone.

All the best,
Glenn B