Bissell's Little Green Mini Is a Small Machine for Life's Messy Moments

Wall Street Journal

16-05-2025

The videos I watched of the Bissell Little Green Mini show it working on far tougher stains than dog-muzzle juice, like coffee on a beige carpet. The Mini's predecessor, the slightly larger Little Green (model 1400B), has a solid reputation for cleaning stains. At about $100, the newer Mini seemed like a reasonable investment that, if it worked, I'd be using more proactively before stains set in. When Bissell offered a model for me to test, I was up to the challenge.
Out of the box, the Mini lives up to its name: the 7-pound (empty) cleaner is roughly 12 x 12 x 6 inches and falls between a coffee maker and a medium-sized toaster oven in size. It has a 12-foot cord with a 4-foot-long hose to get you near the stain.
Bissell ships the Mini with an 8-ounce bottle of liquid stain remover. The cleaner's setup is straightforward: Fill the right-hand side tank to its max fill line with warm tap water, then top that off with roughly an ounce of stain remover. The Mini's limited two-year warranty spells out that you should only use cleaners mentioned in the owner's manual, including the brand's Pet Pro Oxy Spot & Stain and Simply Spot & Stain, to protect internal components.
Once I had loaded the cleaning solution, it was time to suck out some stains. Following the directions, I sprayed the solution on the stain and let it sit for two minutes. Then I went to work, manually rubbing the upholstery with the 3-inch-wide brush built into the nozzle. This step works the solution down into the fibers and, for chunkier stains, loosens debris like dirt. Once you let off the spray trigger, put the nozzle on the carpet and start pulling the tool towards yourself, the vacuum starts sucking. That's when you see the spray and other debris get lifted up through the nozzle's clear, 3 ½-inch-wide suction head.
I continued the pulling motion until almost no moisture was coming up into the tool. Once I was done and the area was dry, the stain was gone. I was impressed that it worked and did the job quickly enough that I can see myself dispatching the Mini frequently to spot-treat stains.
There were a few mild issues in my testing. The tanks leak a bit, especially when loading and unloading it. The rinse tool that comes with the unit — a plastic dome that clips onto the hose for easy storage and flushes the hose before you store it — is something you want to use near the sink because it leaks a little, too.
The Mini might not yank a four-year-old pinot noir stain out of a cream sofa (at least not without some heavy-duty pre-treating), but it's a quick and effective tool for easier-to-remove stains. The alternative — hoping our dog starts drinking from a Stanley tumbler like everyone else — likely takes more training than I have time for.