It is inevitable, especially during the holiday season. Those pretty scented candles that make everything seem so cozy and festive can leave their mark. All it takes is someone enthusiastically blowing out a candle, and you wind up with wax on your carpets.
Your first instinct might be to wipe at the stain, but that is not the best response. wiping the wax can smear it and send it further into the fibers of your carpet.
Your second instinct, if you ignored the first, would be to let the wax harden into a lump or lumps and then pick at it with your fingernails, a butter knife, or whatever you might have that could work as a picking or a scraping tool. But that isn’t the right answer, either. You could easily damage the carpet fibers at best, and at worst make a big hole in the surface of the carpet where the wax had been.
The best way to remove the wax is to re-melt it to a liquid form and then blot it up. You can do this by grabbing some paper towels and placing them on top of the wax. Next get out your iron. With a low setting, gently iron over the paper towel, taking care not to leave it in one place or scorch the carpet. The wax will begin to melt and be absorbed into the paper towel. The paper towels will turn opaque. Remove the used paper towels immediately and replace them with new ones. Continue to use the iron until all of the wax has liquified and has been absorbed into the paper towels.
When the carpet has cooled. Simply brush or vacuum over the spot to restore the fibers.
You can also try this trick on clothing, but make sure to place paper towels on both sides of the garment. Since clothing is generally thinner than carpet, the wax could leach from both sides.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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