Remove paint from carpet

[Gabe]

D
ear Sara:

I spilled some acrylic paint on my carpet while doing a craft. (I had put newspaper down, but I dropped the bottle when I went to put the cap on.) How do I get it off? The carpet is less than a year old! — Dianne, Florida

Dear Dianne:

First, try a wet washcloth. Set it on top of the stain. Leave it for an hour and then blot the stain. If you notice the stain is lifting, do it again. If this doesn’t work, you can use a mixture of laundry detergent and water or dish washing liquid (Dawn, for example) and water (1/2 teaspoon to a quart of water), or use rubbing alcohol.
Test it on an inconspicuous area or a scrap of carpet first. Don’t pour this onto your carpet. Apply it with a cloth and blot, working from the outside of the stain into the center of the stain. Another option is to use a solution that cleans acrylic paint brushes. Your local craft store should sell a product called EZ Air Acrylic Brush Cleaner. Mix half water and half the cleaner in a container. Blot the carpet stain.

Dear Sara:

I think I may want to join a diet website, but I refuse to have to pay money for it. Do you know of a good free diet website? — Shoiji

Dear Shoiji:

Try FitDay.com, Livestrong.com (Calorie Counter, Calorie Tracker & Food Journal | MyPlate on LIVESTRONG.COM | LIVESTRONG.COM) or MyFitnessPal.com. I can’t tell you which will work best for you. That will be different for everyone. I’d give them each a look and decide which you prefer. You might enjoy using a combination of two websites to get community support from multiple sources.

Dear Sara:

What can you use instead of coffee filters? We ran out of coffee filters today and I thought I remembered there is something else that people use in lieu of real coffee filters. — Q.M., Canada

Dear Q.M.:

If you have a used filter in your coffee maker, you can rinse it and use it again. You can use a paper towel in a pinch, but this tends to allow loose grounds to pass into the coffee maker and it can get messy. I have a reusable filter that I really like. You could make a cloth filter or drawstring pouch out of cheesecloth, hemp, unbleached muslin or any loose-weave cotton. Use a paper filter as your pattern or visit www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Reusable-Coffee-Filter and www.instructables.com/id/Make-Reusable-Teabags-and-Coffee-Filters for tutorials on both types of cloth coffee filter patterns.
More expensive options are investing in a French press or Keurig coffee maker. This will allow you to make smaller individual cups of coffee without needing a filter at all, and you can enjoy your coffee made in a variety of ways.

photo by All sizes | Painting... | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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