The Bissell Little Green Is Perfect for Couch Stains
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I’ve been hearing good things about the Bissell Little Green for years but never had the chance to test it — I had a leather couch, which absolutely doesnotwant to get wet and soapy. Luckily, my partner and I bought a ’90s vintage sofa from Facebook Marketplace around the same timeCouch Weekwas conceived. Its nubby, sun-faded nylon upholstery made the perfect test case for the upholstery cleaner, so I gave it a go — because how dirty could a secondhand couch from the 1990s be?
The design is delightful.
Even before I got it out of the box, the matcha-green color of this little appliance made me smile. The commitment to green is thorough, from an articulated green hose to small plastic latches and levers that could have been any other color in the hands of a less monomaniacal designer. I love its rounded silhouette, and it’s also quite intuitive and pleasant to use — I followed the instructions for setup, but I didn’t need any help understanding the process of attaching and detaching heads, removing and filling the water tanks, or wrapping up the hose into a well-contained coil after I was done cleaning.
It’s like a Shop-Vac with a shampoo trigger.
To use the Little Green, you squeeze a trigger on the hose to squirt out a cleaning solution (the brand supplies a bottle of cleaner that you dilute with tap water, but you can also use any other product suitable for upholstery), then vacuum up the excess water and grime with the hose. It feels a bit like a Shop-Vac with a finer tip. The model I tested comes with two different hose tips: a standard spade-shaped head with orange bristles to help scrub up debris, and a long, pointed crevice tool. It’s fairly intuitive to use, although it took some practice to aim the cleaning solution where I wanted it to go. (For tough stains, it’s a good idea topretreat the area with a stain removerbefore turning on the Little Green.)
The vacuumed-up water goes into a tank; make sure you clean out the tank and tools between uses. When I was done, I was stunned at how much grayish water a single pass produced — gross, but a sign that the Little Green was doing its job.
It works best on small areas.
I’d describe the Little Green as a souped-up spot cleaner — it gets stains out fast, but it’s too small to cover large areas, like rugs or carpets. It’s best at cleaning up small, localized stains, ideally soon after they happen; cleaning an entire couch with it was on the outer limit of how much time and elbow grease I wanted to spend using the Little Green.
It doesn’t use heat.
Some otherupholstery cleaners, like the Bissell ProHeat Revolution, use heat in addition to a cleaning solution to lift tough stains, but the Little Green doesn’t heat up. Heat helps lift some kinds of stains, so you can fill the tank with warm tap water for better results. Just don’t use water so hot that it might melt plastic components — the max is around 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
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The suction and scrubbing may be too harsh for delicate textiles.
As I swept the vacuum head over the nubby nylon upholstery of my sofa, I noticed a few weaker threads coming loose. The textile is dense enough that it didn’t present a serious problem, but the tool does introduce a lot of suction and friction to any textile it cleans. Don’t use it on anything that can’t get wet (leather, silk), and I’d also avoid using it on anything loosely woven and delicate, like a lighter-weight linen or any upholstery that is already damaged or fraying.
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