Lipstick

We had a little incident this week when my youngest little angel got hold of a lipstick.  Don't ask me how, the irony is that when I went out of Friday night I could not find a single lipstick anywhere!  Any way my little monkey had pulled a bag down from a shelf, emptied it and found a lipstick right at the very bottom.

I should also add all this happened at 6am.  My daughter got up took herself downstairs and thought to herself "what shall I do today" I was woken later to be told by my four year old - who had just woken up.  I had to come and look at the "benourmouse" mess her sister had made.  The lipstick was all over her, all over her clothes and all over the banisters - worst of all it was ALL over the carpet.

So in case you are ever in the same position here is what works and what doesn't work to get lipstick out of carpet.

• Cornflour to absorb the grease - not a huge success but mostly because the lipstick was well worked into the carpet, had it been on the surface this may have stopped an oil mark developing.
• Fairy liquid - this did improve the stain but I was cautious about using too much and working up too much of a lather.  On a really thin carpet this would work well.
• Vodka - this actually did quite a good job but there was still a very visible lipstick mark on the carpet.

By this point I really just wanted the mark gone and was sick of scrubbing my carpet so I used Vanish power shot carpet cleaner.  It smelt strong and chemically, but hey the Vodka didn't smell great either but it worked!  I think the Vodka tip may be worth remembering for smaller future carpet stains - I'm sure there will be many.

Tip: If you don't drink, or don't keep spirits in the house but want to try this.  Buy miniatures from wine shops.  Any clear strong spirit should work as a solvent on difficult stains.  i tested the carpet in an inconspicuous area first.

My thanks to my darling daughter for inspiring this post, you really didn't have to.