a little bit chaotic, a little bit calm.....
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go and try ‘floatation’.
I know, I know. What’s floatation?
Well, I had some idea of what it was but when I was offered the opportunity to go I wasn’t entirely sure what it entailed.
Basically, the very cool looking tank below (also known as an i-sopod) is a floatation tank. It’s quite shallow, but deep enough to float in and it contains epsom salt water which holds up your body weight so you get to, yes of course….float!
A couple of weeks ago we went to see Andy & Mikes Tick Tock Time Machine at the Solihull Arts Complex.
As I’ve said before, all of the Cbeebies presenters are ace in live shows. Andy is the only one we haven’t seen do a live show before, however, I still had very high expectations.
And we weren’t disappointed. Both Andy and Mike are FULL of energy, funny, silly and generally a bit bonkers.
Perfect entertainment for kids!
And us.
A few weekends ago we were lucky enough to go and see Sid Sloane from Cbeebies fame in his very own show at the Grand Theatre in Lancaster.
The kids were extremely excited to go and see Sid’s Show and so were me and my mum. Probably more than they were to be honest!
I’d read a few reviews about the show before we went and realised that the show was just Sid. No one else at all. And we’re more than used to (well we were anyway) seeing Sid do links on his own on Cbeebies, but entertaining an audience full of young children? Different kettle of fish altogether. I had every confidence that Sid would be able to pull it off (these Cbeebies presenters have boundless amounts of energy!) but I was interested to see how he would do it.
When we first moved into our house 7 years ago it had brand new cream carpets. Not the ideal choice with a lively Cocker Spaniel but it seemed silly to replace them when they were already new and we managed to keep them quite clean. Even when the dog did things like sicked soap all over the living room carpet! Not pretty to clean up. At all. Poor hubs! (I’m far too squeamish for that)
People used to religiously take their shoes off when they visited. Then the kids arrived. One dog and two children later, people still ask, ‘should I take my shoes off?’ and now I’m more likely to be saying, ‘Are you kidding? Have you seen the state of our carpets? You’d best leave them on so you don’t get your socks dirty!’
A couple of months ago my friend chucked a whole glass of red wine over the dining room carpet. Not on purpose I might add. She just got a little overexcited. Such were the state of our carpets that by the time I’d mopped it up with a couple of tea towels you could hardly tell there was a red wine stain!
I’ve used other carpet cleaners before, they usually look a bit less grubby afterwards. But unfortunately the brush on my mum and dad’s carpet cleaner no longer works which means the last time I cleaned the carpets, I did the entire downstairs carpets with the handheld attachment. It took hours and my knees were NOT happy by the time I’d finished!
So, when there was the opportunity to review a Rug Doctor (which I’ve wanted to try out for years, as I was quite certain it’d do a much better job) I grabbed it with both hands!
The very nice people at Rug Doctor sent us machine and some detergent. I managed to clean our dining room, the living room, Lil Misses bedroom and our completely gross dining chairs, which I am so ashamed of I don’t want to show you. But for the purposes of fairness there’s a picture below.
Please don’t judge me.
Cream fabric dining chairs and messy children are not a good mix!
Our carpets were completely covered in strange little black marks, I have no idea where these come from. I’ve had this strange image of monsters visiting our house for the last five years, messing up the carpets as we’re sleeping (or not!) However, I suspect it’s a variety of juice, Calpol & banana stains. I don’t even want to think what else it might be!
So anyway, back to the carpet cleaning. I was very impressed at how easy the Rug Doctor was to use, although I did have to ask Google how to get the hoses off to attach the handheld hose, it was very simple once I knew what I was doing!
I was extremely horrified when I saw how dirty our carpets actually are! I won’t even talk about the colour of the water that came out of the machine!
I was honestly surprised at how much I had to refill it, about 4 times for the dining room, which is tiny compared to the living room. I lost count with that! However, totally worth it. It takes minutes to actually use it once the hot water and detergent is in there and the results….well, I’m extremely impressed.
You can see for yourself the difference it’s made to the carpets……
And the dining chairs (Excuse the little people, I couldn’t get them off to take pictures, they were busy playing buses, and I was forbidden from removing the ‘bus’ from the conservatory where I’d left it to dry!)
I have to be honest and say that the chairs didn’t come up anywhere near as well as the carpets, but in all fairness they’re well past it and only reupholstering is likely to save them now! However, they’re much cleaner than they were and no one has a look of disgust on their face when I suggest they sit down anymore, so I’m happy!
I’ll definitely be hiring one on a regular basis, hopefully I’ll get around to doing it once a year or so. Given how easy it is to do yourself and how little it costs, it’s well worth it.
It costs £23.00 to hire a Rug Doctor machine for a day and you can buy a 4L bottle of detergent for just over £20.00, which will clean up to 8 rooms depending on their size. There are smaller bottles if you only need to do a room or two, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to clean anything that stands still long enough! If you want to hire a Rug Doctor, then you can visit their site and pop your postcode in the stockist locator and they’ll tell you the nearest place to get one, simples!
Big thanks to Rug Doctor who provided us with a machine and detergent for the purposes of this review and the sake of my poor carpets!