I'm not sure what I was thinking when I picked out a light beige carpet for our living room. We have an open floor plan, so the carpet gets regular traffic from the kitchen, front door and garage. Keeping it clean wasn't too bad, though, until my Bissel carpet cleaner went kaput. The light beige began to look brown.

I couldn't afford to buy anything too expensive, so I bought Hoover's F5914-900 SteamVac with Clean Surge for around $140 on Amazon.com. I usually spend more time researching purchases, but the situation was getting out of hand. Fortunately, the Hoover is a keeper.

The carpet looked close to new after cleaning it (and it's a long way from new). The Hoover has a 12-amp motor and five spinning brushes with a clean surge feature to blast extra cleaning solution into stains. I liked the fact it has two separate water tanks - one for clean water and one for dirty. My old one didn't have this feature, and it got kind of messy emptying the water. The Hoover also is fairly lightweight for a carpet cleaner. My only complaint is the special stair/upholstery nozzle. It works well, but it's complicated and not at all convenient to put on. Another issue, though minor, is the startup pedal. It's on the left, where you would normally find the knob that lets down the handle. Needless to say, it took me awhile to learn not to push it when I wanted to drop the handle.

The bottom line: For a relatively inexpensive carpet cleaner, this Hoover gets the job done. Just be patient putting it together and when switching to the upholstery nozzle. And if you're not mechanical, have someone help you.

Lifestyles reporter Sylvia Anderson may be reached at sylviaanderson@npgco.com