Hey there! Today I’m going to talk about one of those things that you hate doing, but love the result afterwards… steam cleaning your carpets!
Let’s be honest here… carpets can get gross.
Really gross.
Especially if you have kids. Or pets.
Or God help you, both.
The carpets in my old house used to get so gross that when we built our new house, I decided not to have any carpets at all! Which frankly kinda posed a problem when doing this post.
Fortunately, dirty carpets are easy to find! I called my mom and asked her if she wanted her carpets cleaned. I’m sure me calling to beg her to let me clean her carpets was a phone call my mom never expected! 🙂
For my carpet cleaning adventure, I rented two steam cleaners: The Bissell Big Green and the Rug Doctor. Both steam cleaners rented at the same price, and the steam cleaning formula was about the same too. But I gotta say, I just loved the smell of the Bissell Deep Clean and Refresh steam cleaning formula with Febreeze! The Rug Doctor steam cleaning formula just smelled kinda meh.
The first thing I noticed while I was unloading the steam cleaners at my mom’s house was the was their brushes. The Bissell brush was a large brush that rotates with several rows of bristles, whereas the Rug Doctor brush has one row of brush that vibrates.
We got the steam cleaners inside and went to work. I manned the Rug Doctor while my hubby (bless his heart) manned the Bissell Big Green.
The first thing we noticed was that it was much easier to fill the Bissell Big Green. It has a removable see through tank with a filler mark so you know how much water to put into it. Then all you have to do is add two cap fulls of the Bissell Deep Clean and Refresh steam cleaning formula and you’re ready to go! The Rug Doctor’s fill tank is on the bottom of the unit and does not come off. You have to use something else to measure the one gallon of water needed, and it took a few minutes for my mom to find something we could use to measure out the water.
Once we got that all squared away, we started cleaning with our prospective machines on the opposite sides of the room. The Rug Doctor with it’s vibrating brush is hard to operate, as the vibrating brush seems to make it harder to maneuver back and forth over the carpets. The Bissell Big Green however was a breeze to maneuver! My hubby was having no problems at all with it. I obviously chose the wrong machine to operate! 🙂
Then we noticed how much better the Bissell Big Green cleaned the carpet. We abandoned using the Rug Doctor pretty quickly as the Bissell Big Green was doing a much better job! As you can see in the before and after picture below, the top half we cleaned with the Bissell Big Green looks amazing! It made my mom’s 15-year-old carpet look brand new!
It was so satisfying seeing all the dirt coming out of the carpet!
Once the dirty tank was full, we took it outside to dump. I opened it up to dump it, and I couldn’t believe how dirty the water was! I know that means that the Bissell Big Green really sucked out all the dirt and grime out of my mom’s carpets, but… eww!
So obviously, Bissell Big Green won this competition hands down! But if that isn’t enough to make you run down to your nearest Bissell rental location, then maybe this $10 off your next Bissell Big Green rental and formula purchase will!
Now for the giveaway! All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment below on why you want to rent a Bissell Big Green, and you could win a coupon for a free rental! Winner will be chosen and notified on June 6th.
I hope you enjoyed the Carpet Steam Cleaner Challenge! 🙂 Happy Cleaning!
I want to rent one because our carpet gets filthy with human and canine foot traffic, and it’s expensive to have them professionally cleaned. I’d rather do it myself and save. I love the fresh look and smell after they’re cleaned.
I would like to rent one, because I have lived in my apartment for about 8 years and of course no matter how many times I use my home vacuum cleaner it still looks dirty!
I would like to rent one for my daughter. She just bought her first house (at 26 and all on her own) and the carpets are old and well pretty dirty. They are in good shape just need to be cleaned really well. it sounds like the Bissell Big Green will do the job. We have no carpet in our house, so I would love to help her out this way.
Thank you for the give-away. have a great Day!
*I didn’t sign up for the newsletter because I already receive it!
This was a great post. Like you I would love to be carpet-free. My cousin removed my carpet from the living room, stairs, and landing. We’d planned to paint the area, but the stairs and landing are such bad quality that you cannot paint, so I’ll have to replace the carpet there. Now I wish I’d tried the Big Green before removing all that. I still have carpet in the bedrooms and it’s in good shape, but I do need to clean it. I’ve only ever used the Rug Doctor and love that you did a comparison. I definitely want to try the Big Green one.
Because we’re going to moving soon and really need to get the whole house deep cleaned
With three children, it seems like I can never get the house clean / clean enough. With the summer, they’ll be spending the majority of their time with their sports or at sports camps so I can really dig into the carpets and pretty much everything.
My golden retriever is 14 years old and along with the dog fur and dirt from the yard,she is having some incontinence issues. Honeybun loves sleeping on the carpet but it needs a deep cleaning for both of our well being. Would be a blessing if we could win. Thank you!!
We have two furbabies and four young kids. With summer looming in our future and the traveling between outdoors and the living room, my poor carpet looks nothing like what we got when we purchased our home. I would love to win this to try to get back what i once had. Plus I love that you guys have done the work testing both! I have tried the Rug Doctor personally and was not impressed. I had a friend that told me about the Big Green and what great results she had. Now that I see your post, I know!
Bissell products are the best. We have a black lab that makes a mess everywhere. His dirty paw prints to him scratching his back on the carpet. Bissell comes thru every time. If I owned one, I would clean my carpets monthly, instead of seasonally. My carpets would actually look gray like they should!
Thank you for the chance to win.