I live in a townhome but only have carpeting on my upstairs floor, none on stairs itself. Right now it’s just me, and my dog.

Lately I’ve needed to borrow my neighbor’s spot cleaner as my dog has vomited after chewing sticks all day, on a couple of occasions.

So I went down the rabbit hole and it looks to boil down to basically $100 CAD for the cheapest but acceptable spot cleaner, $150-200 CAD for a good spot cleaner… and seemingly $300-400 CAD for an upright like the BISSELL HydroSteam, which has a hose+attachments for “spot cleaning”.

So it got me thinking - should I just get an upright, store it in the closet and use spot cleaning as needed and maybe an annual full carpet clean?

My default plan was to get professional carpet cleaning done every 2 years, which would add up a bunch more but be a lot easier and surely better quality cleaning, so that’s a consideration…

Currently minimal area rugs and such but those would surely become a factor as well.

What would you guys recommend? It feels a bit weird to consider a big upright cleaner that realistically probably won’t get used more than once a year, but then becomes cumbersome for spot cleaning?