Animals Drive Me Coconuts!

We love animals.  We do.  We have several at the moment.  Two dogs, five (yup...5) cats, and a Ball Python (SNAKE!).  Well, and Cassie's hermit crab, Angel, that died years ago when the cat knocked down it's habitat and ate it.  But she was so upset and the shell was missing so we told her that she must have just run off and was hiding because she was scared.  I had all intentions of buying a new one to replace it, but never did.  Anyway, Cassie is still convinced that the stupid thing is living somewhere under the deep dark expanse of mommy & daddy's bed.  Not my best parenting moment (It was wrong, I've let it go too long, death is part of life, I'm horrible.  We can't always be perfect moms.  Like everyone else, I know I've traumatized my children.  I don't mean to, it happens, good intentions, yadda yadda yadda).  But sometimes our fur babies are the ones who are beyond frustrating.  They get into things and do things that you would expect from a toddler, not the creatures you expect you protect your house and hunt vermin.  It doesn't mean we don't love them any less, it just means that sometimes we might not like them so much.  And that brings me to yesterday.

Lucy, one of our dogs, is a bottom less pit of a garbage disposal and will eat anything she perceives to be food.  Lucy is a ridgeless Rhodesian Ridge Back.  They are notoriously known for being insatiable.  She regularly steals things left out in the open.  Apparently if we are not in the room any longer it means they are a donation to the k-9 fund.  She has eaten an entire can of a visiting friends baby formula, a pound of powdered sugar ear marked for icing for cupcakes we were going to make for a neighbor who had recently lost her husband, and this past Christmas she ate several containers of my mother in law's AMAZING chocolate crinkle cookies (which even though I have the recipe they never turn out as heavenly and fudgy as hers).  I'm still miffed about that one, I was looking forward to crinkles.  We are lucky she didn't die from the chocolate, but that's a BARF dog for ya.

Last week, for Easter, the girls got those little shaped sponges that come in gelatin pills to be dissolved in water for hours of bath time fun.  They each received 15 of the things.   Lucy apparently thought those were food too, since she ate all freaking 30 of them!  This of course sent me into a dead panic and my girls into fits of hysterical crying.  We ended up (after a good hour of freaking out) having to induce vomiting using peroxide in hopes that she would bring them all up from whence they came.  The vet said if she didn't puke 'em she wouldn't poop 'em and the only other options were either surgery or death from an obstruction.  Thankfully, she threw them up.  All 30.  How do I know?  Because I stood in the yard with a stick, digging through dog vomit *shudder* counting the already expanded sponges to make sure.  No bowel obstruction here.  So one would think, that after all that, she would have learned her lesson.  Or... not so much.

Yesterday, Lucy, in the time it took me to drive my kids to school and come home (about 20 minutes), went into my bathroom, got onto the counter, got down my entire brand new jug of coconut oil, gnawed the lid off, and ate it.  ALL of it.  She then promptly went to throwing up said coconut oil.  All day, all over.  Awesome.  Now, I am a sympathy puker.  The sound, look, smell...  UGH! *gag* All of it turn my stomach horribly, so this was not a great situation.  Never mind the fact that she was vomiting oil.  I had dark stained slick patches on my carpets and furniture.  The largest one ending up on my light beige microfiber sectional.  Even more awesome.  Now, the couch is going on 7 years old and has seen MUCH better days.  Seven years with two kids, two amorous adults, and an endless parade of pets, rescues, foster animals, and don't forget the roommates that sit on the furniture with knives in their pockets and jab lovely little slits all over the cushions, will make any upholstered furniture look like the inside of a litter box, let alone a light colored one.  But it's still my couch, still pretty (all be it stained and dirty and holey), still perfectly functional, and well, mine.  I had to get the oil off of and out of the non removable cushion, but how?

In our quest to go all natural, I have been studying different applications and uses for common household items.  Like tumeric, honey, baking soda, cinnamon, vinegar, bay leaves, salt, peroxide.  They all have immense applications outside of their standard uses.  Some medical, some house hold, some just bizarre.  I decided to turn to Baking soda and peroxide.  Home made Oxy-Clean.  But this was a big soaked in oily blob of a spot on the couch.  I knew just mixing the soda, peroxide, and water in a bottle and spritzing it on was going to be about as effective as rubbing an apple on the couch.  I had to come up with an industrial form.  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....  *thinkthinkthinkthinkthink* (Where's all this smoke coming from?)......

I, in all of my wisdom and glory, decided to use them all seprately from, but in conjunction with, each other.  The worst that would happen is that it would make it worse.  The best, I'd get the oil up.  I was leaning more towards it won't do anything.  But I decided to try.  First, I went into the kitchen and put the tea kettle on to boil.  Then, I grabbed my trusty box of baking soda (I go through 2 boxes a week between cooking and cat litter...  mostly cat litter :-/) and started liberally sprinkling it on to the oil soaked couch.  I grabbed one of the girls old tooth brushes (I always save the old ones) and using the tooth brush and my hands got to vigorously rubbing the baking soda into the stain.  It actually pulled up so much oil that it started turning into a paste.  A lovely graying brown paste.  *gross*  I knew my couch was dirty (especially since that's the part where the dogs always lay) but this was embarrassing.  I put on more baking soda, and more, until it wasn't quite so pasty, but still lightly holding together.  I then took the bottle of peroxide (same bottle I bought to make Lu yack up the sponges) and pored some over the top of the baking soda and started scrubbing with the tooth brush and my hands.  I added more peroxide as needed until it was more of a puree type consistency.  This was an even nastier color.  My oldest informed me she wouldn't be sitting on the couch ever again when she saw this.  I was kind of right there with her.  EW!

I scrubbed and I scrubbed at that nasty spot with that little tiny tooth brush until I could see it start to lighten up.  The kettle was ready and I poured that scalding hot water all over my gray paste couch cushion and started scrubbing some more.  Oh my holy jeans!!!!!!!!  You could see the dirt lift out!  Seriously!  It was amazing!  We were scrubbing and laughing like we had stuck gold and was trying to find more.  Next I busted out my Bissel Little Green machine (LOVE that thing) and started sucking and scrubbing, scrubbing and sucking all the nastiness off the couch.  The water coming out looked like Yoohoo!  So disgusting!  What I saw when it was all up made me want to sit and cry.  Literally.  I wanted to sit and cry like a 2 yr old that dropped their ice cream.  Even soaking wet I could see the results, and I knew, at that moment, my weekend was shot!

We have cleaned the couch MANY times since we've bought it.  The cleaners were so harsh they cracked your hands to use them, took more scrubbing (or at least as much) as method I just tried.  They left my house smelling like industrial solvent, my couch reeking for weeks, and me with a migraine.  But it was clean.  This stuff just smells clean and slightly metallic.  No fumes, barely dry hands, and my couch....  My couch was gorgeous.  Well, that spot was.  Just to make sure it wasn't the coconut oil that made it so pristine (stranger things have happened) we moved over about a foot and did another spot.  Same results!!!!!!!!!  *happydancehappydancehappydance*  We covered it with a towel so the dogs didn't lay on the wet spots and went to bed.  This morning I awoke to this (which I am actually embarrassed to show you.  I swear it didn't look that filthy before)....

My weekend is definitely shot.  We knew the couch was dirty, but thought most of it was stain.  It hadn't come out in a while, so we chocked it up to the light color and left it at that.  But after seeing the results this morning I knew I had no other option but to spend the weekend cleaning the entire rest of the sectional.  And the matching chair.  I could not leave the couch with two clean spots showcasing how disturbingly grimey the rest of it was.  My OCD wouldn't allow that, even if my laziness would.  Soooo....  I was worried that it wouldn't work at all and instead it may have worked a little too well.  Which is awesome considering that I also woke up to Lucy's other end expelling the ingested oil as well.  *sigh*  At least I know a way to clean it up now.

I did end up cleaning at least the rest of that cushion this morning.

And that my friends, is on HECK of a difference!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I can't wait for it to dry so I can take a nap on it's luxurious cleanliness.  The serious added bonus to peroxide is that this clear, bubbly liquid possesses anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-mold, anti-fungal AND anti-mildew properties.  So I know that it'll be really clean and not just look clean.  It's so awesome to know that all I really need to clean my house is a bottle of  hydrogen peroxide rather than a ridiculous arsenal of toxic chemicals.  Well, peroxide, baking soda, vinegar, and hot water.  Still, it's all all-natural, baby.

So our baby step for today is to clean our upholstery/carpets all naturally (we'll worry about the rest of the house later).   Have a spot, grime, dingy yuckiness, or malordorus funk coming from your couch?  Stains on your carpet or stinky little tinkle spots you can't get Fido and Fluffy to stop using?  Get rid of it.  You know it works now and it's not really all that hard, so you have no excuse.  I paid $0.60 for the peroxide & $0.50 for the baking soda... and I didn't come close to using all of either.  Think of the benefits to our family, home, pets, pocket book, and planet by simply employing this tactic as opposed to aerosol cans full up with harsh man made chemicals.  I'm seriously in love with peroxide right now.  But since Lu's butt just exploded on my carpet, I'm going to go clean some more.  You'd think I had nothing better to do with my day.............

I hope today you find excitement in the ordinary... like dirt rising from your sofa cushions!