After buying the house I saw the carpet and shrugged it off. I figured I'd take some stain remover to it and - worst case scenario - we would run a steam cleaner over it.
After trying every cleaner available locally to no measurable success, Jesster checked under the house and said the floors probably couldn't handle steam cleaning without damage. This was depressing.
I had to accept that I would not be seeing this carpet in a reasonable state. Ever. And I hated it.
I am a little OCD about floors... I can handle dust but I need to be able to make them look CLEAN. I have trouble getting motivated to clean the house when it will still look like crap no matter how clean it is.
Then I saw instructions of an unusual nature....
Spray the stain with an ammonia based window cleaner (clear is best but none have had problems with the blue that I saw), lay a towel over it and bust out the iron. Turn it to the cotton setting and iron in 10 second bursts.
Well... I just happened to have half a bottle of clear window cleaner and a really ugly pale blue towel with lacy fringe. The iron has been collecting dust for a while so I jumped up and gave it a shot. I saw a lot of notes from people about scorching the carpet so I went with 5 second bursts.
To my absolute BLISS - stains disappeared. I ran all over the house ironing out stains until I ran out of cleaner.
Well, I have a new bottle and an extra towel. Time to get started!!