Maybe this is something that is well know already, but thought I would share this with my few readers.  We just moved into our new home about 2 months ago and our 4 year old son decided (without our knowledge) to take a cup of grape juice in the the living room which has a very light colored carpet.  Needless to say, the worst happened, he tripped and grape juice all over.  Not only the main spilll, but splatter's of grape juice everywhere.

Being that we just moved in, we still have yet to unpack a lot of stuff and of course all of our carpet cleaners / stain removers could not be found.  We didn't want to let it sit for too long while we ran to the local store to grab something to remove the stain, but we had also heard that if you tamp the grape juice with towels, while it will soak up some of the juice, it often pushes it deeper into the carpet, making it even harder to clean up later.

Then I remembered my general science and remembered how well salt soaks up liquid, I thought what the heck, we'll give it a shot.  Dumped the salt on the stains and immediately the salt started to clump as it soaked up the juice.  I used the salt very liberally all over the stain and let it sit for about 30 minutes. 

After sitting, we vacuumed up the salt and believe it or not, most of the stain was gone.  While at the main spill you could still see the purple tint of the grape juice, it was tremendously lightened and alot of the secondary splatters were gone altogether.  After going to the store then and purchasing some chemical remedies, the stain was completely lifted and you'd never know anything happened.

Next time we have a staining liquid spill I'll be going for the table salt instead of the paper towels.