Whether someone spilt a drink or food, or your child has been let loose with colouring pens, you don’t have to tolerate carpet stains. While carpet removers are a viable option, why spend money on a chemical spray when you probably have all of the ingredients you need in your home already?

If you have a particularly difficult stain that seems permanent, a cleaning hack posted from BBC’s Sort Your Life Out TV show has shared a nifty hack. One of the show’s presenters claimed that shaving cream was the answer to the problem in the video. The stain they were faced with was a pen marker that had been left on for a while. The presenter started by lathering shaving foam onto the “permanent stain,” noting that you can use the “cheap stuff” for this.

He said: “So I just lather it on so the shaving foam can start to work its magic. I’m just going to leave that to soak for 10 minutes.

“After, just keep rinsing it off, and you should see it [the stain] start to come away.”

To rinse it off, grab a bowl of water and a wet cloth and wipe down the carpet.

Surfactants are the leading reason why shaving cream can be an effective carpet cleaning solution.

This can help clean carpet stains by lifting and dissolving stain particles from your carpet.

Many shaving foams also contain glycerin, which locks in moisture and removes stains while preventing carpets from drying out when cleaning.

Beyond surfactants and glycerin, shaving creams are useful carpet cleaners because they often contain triethanolamine (TEA), which works as a pH adjuster to ensure the foam is gentle on your carpet.

Other skin-soothing agents, like aloe vera, are sometimes used in shaving creams. These can promote a gentle cleaning process when removing tough carpet stains.

However, shaving foam can be an effective option for spot cleaning; it might not be sufficient for a thorough, deep clean.