A true solution to messy puppies and babies

Kids and puppies. Two things that Neil and I have lived with since we started our life together. What do they have in common? Ridiculously cute, a lot of work, extremely lovable, minds of their own, and one thing's for sure: they're MESSY.

When we were first married, Neil and I had a puppy named Mischka. She was sweet and happy and (laughably) I really thought we were getting ready for parenthood by parenting her. Were we ever wrong. Potty training a puppy is a cake walk compared to potty training a tiny human! But I digress.

House training Mischka should've required us to find a carpet cleaner that was excellent, but I honestly never could and we just settled on getting our stains from house training accidents “mostly” out.

But fast forward 5 years and just because we've moved on from puppies to babies doesn't mean we don't have spills and messes. My 27 year old self would be so surprised to learn we have more stains with babies.

Lyla absolutely insists on carrying her baba with her eeeeeeeverywhere so consequently, she's also always leaving milk puddles everywhere. But it's kind of expensive to have someone out and professionally clean every square inch of carpet in your whole house! That's why I absolutely love the Stainmaster Carpet Care Collection.

Listen though, first thing you must know that I strongly prefer Stainmaster over any other brand of CARPET. Last May when we purchased this house I was embarrassingly extremely excited about the brand new Stainmaster carpet that the house-flipper had just installed. It's identical to the Stainmaster carpet in my mom's home but ours is beige and hers is gray. I was super worried before we moved in whether I'd like beige carpet since I'm kind of trying to un-beige everything (ha) but I actually love it! It's perfectly neutral but it's SO great at resisting stains in the first place.

And when I do need just a quick refresher, I really love the Stainmaster High Traffic Cleaner. It smells so great and easily gives your carpet a refresh that's perfect in between the professional cleanings. It also leaves behind an invisible shield to repel dirt and protect against resoiling – genius! I also can swear to you it does NOT leave any gross or sticky residue behind. Did I mention I love the smell?!

Gotta love my little “helper” back there!! Cutest mess maker I've ever seen.

Right now we don't have a dog (we left Mischka with a mega-dog-loving family when we moved from Utah) but we do have a serious bottle hoarder named Lyla. From the minute we brought her into our home she's been really good at sleeping, eating, and staining the carpet haha. She was a major spitter-upper when I nursed her and even transitioning to bottles she spit up quite a bit the first year leaving a lot of stains on the carpet! Even now with her bottles that she absolutely insists on walking around everywhere with, she really does drip milk all over and I'm constantly trying to keep up with them.

Stainmaster's Carpet Stains and Area Rug Stains cleaners have been lifesavers for keeping our carpet looking good! I've used that rug stain cleaner tons lately and love it more than any other rug or carpet cleaner I've ever tried. You're really supposed to test a small area but I'm way too impatient for that so I've just risked it every time I need to clean up a spill on a rug and so far we've had perfect results!

You definitely want to specifically use the rug cleaner on area rugs though because it's made specifically with more gentle ingredients to protect your pretty rugs.

I honestly haven't tried the Pet Stain Remover because like I said, we don't have pets right now, but based upon our perfect reviews of the other three Stainmaster carpet cleaners, I have a pretty good feeling that it's equally as impressive.

Photos by Arielle Levy
Details for Lyla's Nursery here

You can try out Stainmaster's Carpet Cleaning System here too! And if you find that you love their stuff too, they would love an honest review just like this one.

Thank you Stainmaster for sponsoring this post and collaborating with us on something we love in our home that I'm confident our readers will love, too!