My New Filthy Obsession: Carpet Cleaning Videos

Instagram is owned by Facebook, so it’s impossible to say with certainty what algorithm the company used to determine just why a 44 year old African woman living in South Africa might be interested in watching someone scrub filth from woven wool and scrape it into a hidden gutter off screen. Whatever the rationale, it wouldn’t surprise me if the decision came down to two factors: vibes and evil; in a 20:90 ratio, respectively. (Yes, I am aware that this sum is greater than 100, but Facebook is an exceedingly evil company.)

Nevertheless, the goblins overseeing attention capture were right…I was interested in watching carpeted surfaces being restored from boo boo brown to beige and am now invested in the outcomes of such transformations.

This is the saddest (or what I hope will be the saddest) sequence in my adulting mutation process, and yet I am happy to embrace it. When the Internet was a new and shiny plaything in the mid-late 90s, people my age at the time- okay, primarily women – took great delight in cat videos. They were devoted in their following and re-sharing. As a woman who had just cracked into her 20s, I found this obsession silly, trivial and pathetic. And you know what? It may have been and that was absolutely alright. What I did not know at the time is that Life would spend the next twenty odd years kicking my ass across two continents and that I too would have need to find solace in mindless repetition of water and soap being sprayed and scraped off of one carpet of varying degrees of nastiness to the next.

It is unclear to me who the first person to record themselves vacuuming and scrubbing carpets is, but whoever that person is, I and millions of other eager voyeurs owe them debt of gratitude. At the moment, I can’t think of many things more satisfying than the rhythmic hum of the rotary brush, the rainfall-esque sounds of conditioning solution being poured from a watering can and the

SQWOOSH
SQWOOSH
SQWOOOSSSHHHH!!

of dirt and particulates being ushered out of the fibers of textile floor coverings. I’m tingling just thinking about.

Though there are many carpet cleaners who star in individual Reels, Tik Toks and YouTube channels, there are two companies that have distinguished themselves as my favorites. Please, allow me introduce you to Myles of Advanced Cleaning Systems

…and Lubuskie Cleanliness Center (LCC) of Poland.

These gentlemen and their teams have performed amazing feats in sanitation and addressed unanswered questions, such as:

• WHY?
• WHAT THE HECK?
• ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?
• IS THIS FOR REAL???
  …and so forth.

Watching these videos has greatly enhanced the quality of my life, while encouraging me to pay closer attention to the state of my floor tiles and textiles. Just two weeks ago, I purchased a steam mop for my kitchen and bathroom floors and the transformation incomprehensible. You really don’t know how much grime is still embedded in your floors until you’ve invested in a steam mop!

Now I know what you’re thinking. Will this obsession result in the purchase of a hot water extraction carpet cleaner, such as this one available on Yuppie Chef? I doubt it. For now, I’m quite content to watch men do this version of man work; plus that price tag is nothing to joke with. Fiscal conservatism is a good tempering tool for even my most fiery compulsions. But it would be nice to wake up on Christmas morning and find one sitting next to the tree…
(Good Lord, that is such an anti-feminist statement! I blame the ladies of the Home Edit for all of this!)

What weird things have you found yourself indulging in lately? Are there certain genres of videos that have shocked you, that you would recommend? Who knows, we might like them too! I sincerely want to know and am genuinely curious, because never in 100 years could I imagine myself drifting off to sleep with visions of THIS ushering me into my REM cycle.