In our apartment, we have 2 area rugs that have needed cleaning since we moved in. We think the landlord said she would clean them, but nothing ever came of it so last weekend we thought we would be good tenants and decided to have the rugs cleaned.

The way you clean your rugs here is (1) mop them with a wet mop or (2) take them to the car wash and have them pressure washed. Our rugs were dirty. Not just on the surface dirty, but deep down dirty, so we opted to take them to the car wash behind the house. Support your local business is our theme.

Of course nothing goes as expected. First there are the random power outages that last from 5 minutes to 6 hours. Once washed, then the rugs must dry and we get about 4-6 hours of sunlight each day. So, we were not surprised when it took a couple of days to get the rugs done and when we did pick them up we were not too concerned when they said there was a problem.

Remember, no good deed goes unpunished. It seems somehow, while they were holding the rug waiting for power or sun, they managed to burn the corner and not just a cigarette burn. No, it caught fire and burned about a foot of the carpet on one corner and a hole in the other corner. No problem they tell us, we will just take it to the carpet shop and cut off the burned area. Now all of this is going on in Albanian so who knows if we really understand any of this correctly, so we get the landlord up from her afternoon nap to handle this. She arrives, many words were spoken and end result is the rug will be repaired and we get scolded for not letting the landlord clean the rug by hand.

While waiting for the landlord to come down, Criss asks again how the rug was burnt. Based on the gestures and sounds, since he does not know the vocabulary, the story is it was caused by fire works and a small boy. But who knows, friends have told us that everyone makes up a story to save face and you never get the real story when something happens.

So, in the end, we got a very clean rug although it is about 3 ft shorter. It actually fits in the room better as originally it was too long and we had to fold one end under. We also are not allowed to clean the rugs anymore. In fact, the landlord insisted on cleaning the two smaller rugs for us when she returned the repaired rug. While that is a nice gesture, it seems like a lot of work for her, so our cleaning dilemma will continue.