Casual Product Reviews

The Little Green Portable Carpet and Upholstery Cleaner Actually Works

The thrill of finding something that works when nothing works is powerful.

Bissel’s Little Green Machine, photographed in the angelic light it deserves. Photo by author.

There’s no easy way to say this: my living room has (or had! read on) the faint smell of dog urine. My dog Fish is housetrained, but as any Angeleno will tell you when it rains in Los Angeles it really rains, and during those downpours Fish believes he should be able to pee on my antique chair that I reupholstered with very expensive Christian Lacroix fabric.

I tried to train him out of it. I put up gate at the living room entrance and he apparently jumped over it in the dead of night. I finally gave up and put down pee pads during bad weather, but the damage was done. Part of my living room, which included the above-mentioned chair, a corner of a rug I got from Overstock that was supposed to be “washable” and a plant, smelled like pee.

I tried all the products. I tried this cleaner and this cleaner. Both made various promises about “enzymes” or something to eliminate the odor and stains, but they didn’t work. Like, at all. But I kept spraying and scrubbing because the idea that I actually lived in a home with the smell of dog pee was a bridge too far: I was already binging Netflix and…