Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let's start off by saying I have 3 dogs. Yup, three: small, medium and large. Medium is a little older, and very lazy, and will occasionally have a carpet accident (why you can't just pee on the hardwood or tile sections of the house that are easier to clean is beyond me; we need to have a talk). Small, who was fostered in a home that used pee pads that just encouraged him to pee in the house and whom I have been trying to break of this habit ever since, will mark if he sees that Medium has peed. Good times. So, I have one section of one room in particular that depresses my soul and needs to be cleaned every couple of months with a rented steam cleaner. In the meantime, it's carpet cleaner, paper towels and white rags galore. Ugh. I should be buying stock in paper towel companies. And rug cleaner. I had been thinking about getting one of these for a while, so when I got a gift card from work, I decided to use it on this. Because I'm a nerd. The day it arrived, although I was really excited to use it, I still kind of wish that 2 certain someones could have waited to have accidents until I could at least get it out of the box and read the quick start guide, but alas, that is not my life. So I've been using this on small accidents for a month or so, and pretty darn impressed. Very quick to "set up" each time (I leave the water and cleaning solution in), just need to wait for the warm up, then spray, leave for about 5 minutes, then suck it all up. Love. My kids are even into it, I may even be able to get them cleaning carpets! All I do afterwards is remove the dirty tank and whichever attachments I have used, rinse and dry. Ready to go for the next time. But wait, there's more. I'm actually glad I didn't get the email to review this until after The Great Worm Incident, because I'm not sure if I know how to go back and edit a review, and this would have been worthy of doing so. So what about Large, you may be wondering? Like, why bother mentioning that you have 3 dogs if you never even have to clean up after the one capable of making the biggest messes? So, Large is our latest rescue, and although she was generally healthy, surprisingly, given her situation, she did need to be dewormed. NBD, we've done this a million times. She was scheduled for her last round of pills the same week she got sick. Really sick. Stop reading if general grossness and bodily fluids from all orifices disgusts you. But if you're reading carpet steamer reviews, you likely have some of the same issues, amiright? She was throwing up, diarrhea, and finally, blood in both of those. Uncontrollable. She got the wall to wall carpeting, plus 2 area rugs (plus wood and tile, but tg I have a steam mop for those areas), all in multiple areas. And you can probably guess by the 5 star review, but this thing got them all out. First try. No marks, residue, nothing. It's like it never happened (except to my retinas, which can never unsee such things). I will also mention that most of this cleanup happened at approximately 4am, when no one is in their right mind, and even given that and my skills at that hour, It. Is. All. Gone. (sidenote: Large ended up in the hospital with so many different kind of worms, all of the worms, but is fine now. And we love her, so we were not mad about the carpet steamer test). So, in a nutshell, I would recommend this steamer. A thousand times yes. I will also mention that I bought the specific Pet Stain and Odor Bissell formula (the steamer comes with one small bottle of standard cleaner), and will now give that the same 5 star review. Update 2016: so, I've been using this cleaner for about a year now, and still love it. I did read in some other reviews about a smell and I didn't have that problem. Until I did. Here's what I discovered: when you take out the dirty tank to empty and clean it, there is sometimes some residue of whatever you have cleaned up in that section underneath. So if it's something that has the potential to smell (ahem, dog pee), it's absolutely going to. And the next time you turn on the machine to heat up and use it, it's going to smell like hot pee in the room you're in. Lovely. Here's my solution: once I take off the hose attachment head and the dirty tank to clean them, I take the physical machine itself, put it up on the counter next to my kitchen sink, run the hose across the sink and down the drain (because gravity), then use my kitchen sink sprayer and spray it directly into that hole (where the dirty stuff comes out of the hose and goes into the tank) and reverse clean the entire hose. Since the hose is running into the drain, I just let clean water run through the hose for about a minute, until all reside of whatever you just cleaned has been rinsed out. Problem solved. On a sidenote, I added a special shelf to my laundry room to store/display my Little Green, so it can be on a literal pedestal and brag about how awesome it is and lord it over the other cleaning appliances.