there is melted wax on my carpet. i lit some dollar store candles and they melted soooo fast i didn't notice the wax dripping from the countertop onto my carpet. it's dark brown wax on beige carpet. i'm thinking i may have to cut it out but does anyone have any suggestions??

it's in a very noticable area and i'm renting.

hmmm. i think i remember heloise cleaning melted wax with an iron and a clean towel or cloth. try doing a test patch first, to make sure the iron doesn't melt the carpet.

anyone else have ideas?

This is what I did once with a red candle that melted on light gray carpet. You need some brown paper bags, like grocery store bags, and an iron. I have a "good" iron that I use for clothes and a "craft" iron. If you have only one iron I would reccomend cleaning it very well the next time you use it for clothes. Place the brown paper over the wax and run the iron over the area. You may have to experiment, but the main idea is to melt the wax in the carpet and have the paper soak it up. It worked very well for me. Good luck..I hate when candles run onto the floor.

call a dry cleaner, or a place that sells carpeting..i'm failry sure there's a "product" that removes wax. :)

on another note, if you ever get wax on a shirt or anything..just suck it up and take it to the cleaners. after an hour of doing the paper towel method to an ex's shirt, there was still a greasy waxy spot (citronella candle)...3 bucks at the dry cleaner, boom done. :)

-eryn

angeleryn,

Thanks for the dry cleaner tip! My roommate spilled wax all over a pair of pants and I got the same response from ironing it out: greasy spots. Hopefully they can do better!

siwrl

I just had the same thing happen to me. Those damn dollar store candles. Just this past weekend I lit them and then started writing a paper and before long I turned around b/c I heard something funny and sure enough they had run all down the holder, the table, and onto the carpet!!!

I just cut out what I could and then got lucky b/c the rest of it blends in.

Argh. I love candles but they sure do get messy sometimes!
-Sarah

The best thing to do is the old brown paper and an iron routine - it will get most of it out. Just keep moving the paper and iron around till you don't get anymore wax lifting. Unfortunately you will be left with a color residue as the dyes in candles tend to stain. But if you get all the hard wax off then you can try a stain remover and hopefully you will get most of it off.
As for taking clothing to the dry cleaners - it is best, but you still should get the wax off with the paper and warm iron as it'll be easier for the cleaning solvent to penetrate and you'll get a better result ulimately.

the brown paper bag/iron trick really worked well!
thanks so much to everyone who suggested it. i'm sure i would've made a bigger mess trying to cut the wax out.