Last year on Gene’s IRC, there was quite a discussion about cleaning rugs by putting them out in the snow. Apparently this was a tried and true method used long before vacuums were available. It didn’t work though for Cilla Cameron in Nottingham, England. They had quite a snowfall last year and she followed the steps carefully, but her dog simply wouldn’t leave the rug  covered with snow, and yanked it out to play with in the yard. (there are some great pictures in the archives of Gene’s blog)

We certainly have an abundance of snow here in central Ontario, and my dog doesn’t have access to the front yard, so I decided to give it a try.

This rug is on the bedroom floor, and the dog sleeps on it for at least a part of every night (when we won’t leave him enough room to stretch out to his liking), so it certainly could do with freshening up.

I turned the rug up-side-down, and covered it with about 3″ of fresh, clean snow….then left it for about 2 hours. I then shook the snow off, brushed it with a broom and hung it over the banister to dry.

In all honesty, I can’t see much difference, however this rug is less than a year old…so maybe it doesn’t have enough ‘patina’ yet, for the snow to work on. (please excuse the ugly toes…I forgot to crop them out before I posted the picture)

On the other hand, I think I raised the eyebrows of neighbours and passers-by  when they saw this weird lady out burying her rug in the snow on a Sunday afternoon.