little mess makers

Five years ago, when I was a newlywed in my little basement apartment, I remember looking at a stack of my husband's school papers mixed in with my textbooks and work papers that was taking up a good portion of the kitchen table and thinking, "Wow, it sure is easy to make a mess when two people live in the same small place."

Then, a few years later, when Jason was living with us, I remember looking at all of the stuff for his astronomy merit badge strewn across the floor, along with the stack of my various papers and my husband's textbooks and thinking, "Wow, it sure is easy to make a mess when three people live in the same small place."

When we had our first child, I remember sitting on the floor of the living room, mopping up spit up from the carpet while observing Jason's backpack, Sam's shoes, my laptop, and Claire's teething toys, which were all on the floor with me, and thinking, "Will our house ever be clean again? It's hard NOT to have a mess when four people live in the same small place."

And now that we have the twins, all bets are off. I'm getting better at keeping our main living spaces clean, but nobody better go in my bedroom, which has become the repository for all the random stacks of stuff I haven't sorted through yet. And when it comes to real messes? The carpet is our biggest victim.

I can't even tell you how many hours a day I spend on the floor. I feed the twins on their twin pillow on the floor. I read books to Claire on the floor. We do tummy time and craft time and diaper changing time and laundry folding time on the floor. We spend LOTS of time on the floor, and since it's our most well-loved space, it's also our most well-messed space. (Well-messed? Definitely not a word. Let's go with it anyway.)

When you spend all day on the floor with three tiny messy children, a good carpet cleaning system is a must-have. We've been trying out the new STAINMASTER™ Carpet Care products for about a month now, and we use our bottle of Carpet Stain Remover so often it's almost gone. It begins cleaning on contact, and doesn't leave a sticky residue like other carpet cleaning products do. 

And the best part? It's preventative as well, leaving an invisible shield that repels dirt and protects the carpet against future stains. With three kids under three, you can be certain there will be future stains within a week. Or a day. Or an hour.

Between the Carpet Stain Remover, Rug Stain Remover, and Carpet High Traffic Cleaner, keeping our carpets clean and preventing future resoiling is easy and effective, leaving us more time to focus on the fun stuff. Like doing the same puzzle a million times a day (we seriously need more than two puzzles in this house). ;)

Thank you to STAINMASTER™ for sponsoring this post, and for being the reason our carpets and rugs stay clean and ready for lots and lots of play time.