I dropped some candle wax on the carpet... How do I get it out?
Use an iron and a lot of cleans cotton or linen rags (nothing pilly or plushy, like towels). Pour a bit of boiling hot water on the spot and pick and scrub at it to get out what you can, and scrape at it with a butter knife is it's really on there thick. Then, use the iron for a FEW SECONDS over another clean rag to help suck up the crumbs and bits that you dislodged by picking and scraping. Repeat as necessary. And be rough about it! A few lost fibers of carpet aren't going to mar the look of the carpet as much as the stain will. Carpets are built tough. They can take the scraping and scrubbing and picking. Now, if the candles are heavily colored like red or black, that's another story. Follow up the removal of the wax with a steam cleaning of the carpet, with a heavy dose of Resolve carpet cleaner (and some Clorox Clean-up spray with Bleach if the carpet is light enough, but only DIRECTLY on the discoloration.)
Often wax on carpet is just on the very tips of the fibers. If this is the case you can just snip the wax off with sharp scissors. Just cut the very tips of the fibers. Work slowly. Don't cut a single millimeter more than you have to and pull up while cutting. This will help prevent divots in the carpet. Try your best to do just one or two fibers at a time...not a whole clump. Dissect any wax clumps first by cutting them in half or thirds, so that you separate clumps. This will work unless you have already used an iron or otherwise melted the wax further in to the carpet. Also...cutting the wax off will work on shag or plush carpet, but not Berber or loopy carpet. Good luck. -
