I have a hoover carpet shampooer and use it about once a month to keep the high traffic areas in the house we rent clean, because we really need our deposit money back. The bottles of carpet cleaning solution are extremely costly (about $7) and only come in a liquid form. Yesterday in an act of desperation when the spots simply weren't going away I went to the local grocery store and picked up a jar of Oxi powder stuff from the laundry soap department and was shocked to find that it actually works about twice as well as the hoover brand heavy duty cleaner I was paying twice as much for. Note: I always run over my carpets with a tank of clean water to reduce the soap residue left behind. I am also now throwing down old area rugs in the high traffice areas so I won't have to clean the floors so often.

I was wondering if there are any other stetchers who have any other tips for less expensive carpet cleaning products and/or solutions that one would not normally think to use.

try vinegar and water. I use it for a final rinse (cuts the soap) or if the carpet is not that dirty.

Oh good point. I completely forgot about my favorite all purpose cleaning product. I will definatly start adding that to the rinse water.

I quit using the commercial soaps as the smell was too strong and I felt I never got it fully rinsed out. So we started using OxyClean (cheaper store brand) and hot water in our Bissel machine and found it works just as well. I have also used a vinegar/hot water mixture and it worked really well, too. DH just complained that the smell lasted too long. But it is sooo cheap that he didn't complain long! We now have wood floors so the only time we use our cleaner is on our area rug in the living room to clean up spills/accidents.

I agree the bottles of cleaner are expensive.

I have used vinegar and water (general cleaning), OxyClean (highly stained), or laundry soap (traffic area/mid level cleaning).