Chocolate is universally popular. Whether as a cake, in ice cream, as a sauce, or even in savory dishes, chocolate is a popular food for children and adults alike. Unfortunately, all things chocolate aren’t necessarily all things nice—chocolate stains on clothing, for example, can be especially hard to get out. We’ll show you how to remove chocolate stains from your carpet, so you can enjoy that mug of hot cocoa without fear of ruining your living room!
Getting out a chocolate stain is much easier if you’ve spotted a fresh drop of chocolate or chocolate ice cream on your carpet. Acting fast stops the stain from setting, meaning that you’ll have a higher success rate for removing the stain. Here’s how.
- Mix warm water and dish soap, have some paper towels ready. Apply the solution to the stain and rub it gently.
- Follow up with a solution of diluted white vinegar and water, and rub the spots again gently. Using cold water, flush the spots, and dab/wipe up excess liquid with clean paper towels or a clean old rag. Repeat as necessary until the stain is removed.
- If the stain persists, look into buying carpet-cleaning solution.
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Sometimes luck isn’t on your side and you end up spotting a chocolate stain after it has dried. Not to worry—we’ve got a second method for you here to help lift dried chocolate stains from carpet. This method involves an iron, so if your iron only runs very hot or your carpet fabric can’t handle any heat, then skip the last few steps and move on to method 3.
- Using a blunt knife, scrape off as much of the chocolate as you can.
- After you’ve removed the chocolate leftovers from the carpet, get your vacuum cleaner and clean the area to make sure there are no pieces of chocolate on the carpet.
- Place paper towels over the area once it’s clean.
- Grab your iron and set it to the lowest temperature possible. Put the iron over the paper towels—you don’t need to press the iron on the paper towels in order for the heat to work. Make sure the steam setting is off.
- Once the chocolate has transferred onto the paper towels, you can vacuum the area again.
Whether fresh or dried stains, this technique is a good one for all kinds of chocolate stains. The above two methods help with fresh and dried stains respectively, but this method should help with either case.
- Remove any remaining chocolate, either by blotting liquid or scraping solids away.
- Vacuum the area.
- Using a carpet cleaner spray from your grocery store, spot clean the carpet with it. Make sure you’ve checked that the cleaner is suitable for your carpet by testing it in an inconspicuous spot.
- Once the cleaning product has soaked in, remove it again according to the manufacturer’s guidelines.
- Repeat the process until the stain is gone
That’s how to get chocolate stains out of a carpet. If you’ve had a party and are facing other messes, too, check out how to remove soda stains and how to clean a carpet in general!