Getting Urine Smell Out of Carpet - Works for Kids and Puppies

My best friend S and my other best friend, her hubby E, had their eyes set on a miniature Austrian Shephard puppy all the way to their visit to a breeder last Saturday, where they came home with a 7 week old GoldenDoodle. Their kiddos are still bouncing like SuperBalls (remember them?) and they've named the puppy "Lucky."

E can't bear to crate the baby.  Lucky might get scared, it's mean, says the Tenderhearted E.  And, E is the pack leader here, so he's calling the shots and S is readying herself for the 1,304,356 pee-pee spots that are going to hit their carpet before Lucky is housebroken. 

Meanwhile, my pups are so well-trained that they'll go pee-pee in the pouring rain during a thunderstorm. (Dear Reader, do I sound proud?  Fine.  I am.  Disgustingly so.)   So the new parents asked my tricks of the trade to handle Lucky's leaks over the next few months, as well as how to limit this training period.

As for housebreaking a dog, I'll leave that to another post.  For the immediate issue of urine in the carpets, here's what worked for me:

1.  The smell comes from the urine crystalizing once it's dried.  You want to break up those crystals, get them to dissolve and go away.  There's the goal.

2.  Cheap and easy way to break the urine crystals up is plain old white vinegar.  Yep, that miracle stuff.  Don't be dainty here, pour that vinegar onto the carpet spot -- depending on the size of the spot, this could be up to half a gallon.  Yes, that much.  You want to make sure you're putting enough in there so it soaks down to the urine crystals that have formed in the padding.  Go crazy with the vinegar.  Crazy!!

3.  Be patient.  Leave that vinegar alone for 2 or 3 days.  If this bothers you, don't invite Prince Charles over for dinner till this process is done.  You're cleaning carpets here, it's a process.  That vinegar WILL work, but it needs time to do its job. 

4.  Okay, after the 2 or 3 days, spread a big, old towel down there over the wet spot and do the Mexican Hat Dance on it.  Go crazy with your bad self.  Use another towel if the first one gets really soaked.  Put on Beyonce, Single Lady, and stomp all over that second towel, tell it all about putting a ring on it. 

5.  After two towels, then rest yourself.  Next, it's time to clean the carpet.  I know, I know, this is a Big Enterprise.  You need it to be a Big Enterprise, because the puppy will come back and pee where it smells urine.  Dogs have an ability to smell that's like 45 times as great as ours.  Hence, Big Enterprise.

Me?  I use an OxyClean product with a Hoover Steam Vac with Clean Surge, model F5914-900.  You can get one for around $100 at Amazon.Com.

6. Now, here's the good news.  This process really DOES WORK.  It's worth your efforts here, and they aren't really all that harsh.  Dancing on the towel is fun.  However, getting the puppy not to pee-pee in the house, or the toddler not to wee-wee on the rug ... that's a different story. 

I Love My Memory Foam Mattress Topper - Now I'm Not Buying a New Mattress Set

A couple of years ago, I had one of the TV shopping networks on in the background while I was writing, and succumed to the purchase of a "featherbed" mattress topper.  It seemed like such a great idea, and when I first got the thing aligned on the bed with the sheets fitting just fine, things were fabulous.  It was like I was sleeping on a cloud.

Except it didn't last long.  Things settled, and no matter what I did, the experience was never as good as it was when that feather-stuffed topper first came out of the package.  I decided mattress toppers were bunk.

Then, a couple of months ago, I was pondering buying a new mattress set.  What a conundrum.  Sleep Number, Memory Foam, pillow top -- so many decisions.  Headache.

Before you know it, I'm wandering through my favorite WalMart and there is a whole aisle of mattress toppers there.  At decent prices.  And there's one for a thick memory foam topper.  Now, I already had a memory foam pillow that I'd fight for, so this caught my interest.

I rambled home, and began surfing around, checking out the memory foam mattress topper.  It got great reviews -- in fact, the exact same one that I had spotted at WalMart was rated the highest in the land by some comparison site (that I can't remember right now).

So, I went back to WalMart and caught a sale.  Dear Reader, I'm sure you understand the inner realization that I had that returning to find this product on sale was a sign. So, voila, a new Memory Foam mattress topper for less than $100.00.  Much, much cheaper than a whole new mattress set.

Now, it's been months since my purchase.  And the Memory Foam mattress topper has held up.  It's also solved any issues that I had with my old mattress set, and I'm not planning on replacing the set any longer. 

I cannot tell you how great this Mattress Topper is for sleeping.  One hint:  my terrier mix jumps up on that topper every night about 10:00 p.m., and starts periodically barking for lights out.  She will not move again from that spot for ten hours. 

For more info on mattress toppers, check out the Consumer Search survey and all the information there. 

To check out the Memory Foam Mattress Topper that I have, you can see the product at Walmart's site plus read over 400 5-star reviews of the wonderful thing. 

Image:  Illustration of "The Princess and The Pea" by Edmund Dulac. 

Reba's Super Easy Cheese Sauce Recipe

You know that they serve cheese sauce in Heaven. 

You can pour this stuff over pasta, veggies, sliced chicken breast, biscuits ... heck, I've seen this stuff slurped up with a spoon out of the pot, but I'm not recommending this as a soup (although if you added a bit more liquid to it ... hmmmm)....

Anyway, here's my Super Easy Cheese Sauce Recipe.  Hopefully, you've got what you need in your pantry already for this.

1.  Melt 3T butter in a pot over medium heat.  Stir in the same amount of flour, 3 tablespoons, and throw in your seasoning.  Salt, pepper (say 1/2 teaspoon each).  If you're like me, you like some punch, so last week, I just shook in a nice bit of Montreal Steak Seasoning (because I love this stuff), and it turned out great.

Take the pot OFF THE HEAT while you're stirring this all together.  Make sure it's a thin goop.  No lumps.  Consistency should be similar to lemon curd.  (Now, this is why one of the reasons that I like a gas stove.  You just turn the knob, no more heat.  If you've got an electric stove, that won't work; you have to move your pot to another burner b/c the electric coil still gives off heat for a bit after you've turned it off.)

2.  Now, after you've proudly combined your butter and flour, turn the heat back on under the pot, a low to medium heat now, and slowly add in 1.5 cups of milk.  Pour out a quarter in at a time.  Stir, stir, stir.  Make sure your butter/flour stuff has accepted all the milk before you add more to the pot. 

And, this doesn't have to be milk.  It could be Half and Half.  It could be evaporated milk (the canned stuff in your pantry).  It could be part Half and Half, part milk.  It could be half evaporated milk, half water --- which was what I had on hand last week, and what I used.  Worked like a charm.  You get the idea. 

3.  Okey dokey.  Now that you have your milk combined with the butter/flour sludge, you have to let the heat do its miraculous chemical altering trick.  Stir, stir, stir while this pot is over low heat. 

Does this mean that you can't leave the pot to put the measuring cup in the sink, or the milk back in the fridge?  No.  Does this mean you can't go watch TV?  Yes.  Movement is important here, as is the low heat.  If you feel a film forming on the bottom of the pan, your heat's too high. 

Stiring is boring to you?  It's not going to take that long, get a grip!  Hum a tune, decide whether or not Rhett ever went back to Scarlett, pretend you're doing your own Food Network show and talk to the imaginary camera.  Just keep stirring. 

Before you know it, this stuff will be thick.  If you stopped now, you'd have white sauce.  But that's not what we're aiming for here, so throw in at least 1 cup of grated cheese.  If you don't want to grate the cheese, then cut it into small, small chunks.  Little squares that expose lots of surface area, so the cheese will melt quickly in the pot. 

And that one cup of cheese is debatable, too.  Me, I throw in more -- how much more depends on what I've got on hand.  A little less than one cup?  That's okay, too.  Hey, if you've got two kinds of cheese in the fridge, combine them -- as long as their flavors don't clash for you.  Keep stirring until the cheese is melted, and the sauce looks like you want it to look.  Smooth, thick, decadent. 

What kind of cheese should you use?  Something with lots of punch, no subtle cheeses here.  Sharp Cheddar is good, for example.   Blue cheese can be mouth-watering:  I've made this stuff with blue cheese and thrown it over some steak, and it was to die for.  Just remember, you want to grate your own cheese - none of that bagged stuff, because of the additives they use to keep the cheese from clumping.

There you have it.  Maybe this isn't the stuff of fancy French chefs, but it works for me - and I like it because I monkey around with this based on what I have in the house, and it always turns out so, so tasty. 

Plus it's easy - and yet, most folk think a cheese sauce is so, so hard to do.  Well, I won't tell them if you won't.