We had a house in Portland Oregon this week which had a nice 6×6 stain from a soda can. The customer had tried to the best of their ability to pull it out and had limited success. It seemed as if the stain would go away and then come back and look bigger and darker than before. This is a response that I hear quite frequently. Customers are sometimes succesful in taking out the top part of the stain with a rag or shop-vac if they respond to the stain immediately. More time than not they can’t clean deep enough in the fibers to pull it all out and that is why it returns. The sugar left behind acts as a dirt magnet and that is why the stain looks darker than before the initial cleaning. Now that we are at the heart of the winter season and more dirt is being tracked in the house than normal, it was best that she called me to remove the stain all the way while pulling the left behind sugar that would have continued to be a serious issue.