the magical rug (a lesson in patience)

A home is like people in this way, always evolving, waiting. The best details tend to unfold with time.

– Bethany Douglass

This spring David and I split a sum of money we received to use for our own personal house projects. I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that I wanted to spend my half on the inside of our home, while David’s is for the yard, specifically his gardening schemes.

I love decorating our house and always have ideas swirling in my head. But like I’ve told you before, I really do try to steer clear of Pinterest and design blogs and Homegoods until the time comes for a real project. Doing this helps me in my battle with contentment.

But last month I was excited to jump back on all my favorite sources for ideas and create a few Pinterest boards for inspiration.

I had three projects in mind:

– Give Gabe and Noah’s room a facelift

– Finish furnishing/decorating our master bedroom

– Buy a real, grown-up rug for the living room

We still have some work to do on the master bedroom, but are very close! So I’ll have photos soon, but first, the rug. Or, as I like to call it, the Magical Rug.

The main way I decided how to spend my money, was to ask the question: “What bugs me about our house right now?” Or, “What would I change to make it feel more restful/cozy/efficient?”

You know what’s funny?

This question is what got me started on my spring purge and cleaning. Turns out, some of the things that bugged me could easily be remedied with a deep clean and some organization, rather than spending money. So I tackled those first. If you don’t have money to spend on new things right now, I bet there are a couple of projects you can tackle to make your home feel homier.

So, as you can figure out: the boys’ room bugged me. Living in an unfinished bedroom bugged me. And lastly, our living room rug bugged me probably most of all.

Here’s what it looked like:

Not terrible, right? Actually it’s a very cute wool IKEA rug I bought a couple of years ago with birthday money. It’s just too small for this space.

I’ve long had a love-hate relationship with rugs. I enjoy the hardwood floors in our house, but they feel a little stark without rugs. David personally doesn’t like the feel of dirt and crumbs on his feet without a rug or two to wipe them off. But rugs are expensive! So I’ve made do for years with the smallest rugs I could manage to add some warmth and color to our rooms.

Problem is, unless you buy a really flat rug with a good pad, they generally flap up and scoot all over the place and are an endless sources of frustration to housewives everywhere. Especially the wool rugs that look cute and are trendy right now. I have three of them from IKEA and they exhaust me. I’ve been through multiple rug pads/rug tape, and even tried a DIY project that suggested squeezing caulk onto the underside (and let it dry thoroughly), to keep the rug from slipping. Well, it doesn’t work!

The kids love to run circles throughout the house and wrestle in the living room and our rug was always askew. And I was worried people would trip and fall. Actually full disclosure: my children did trip and fall. Multiple times!

Whew.

The time had come for a nice, big grown-up rug. You know what I mean, the kind that actually sits under your furniture.

I had two friends who helped me: Ashley and Annie. They are my rug inspirations. Ashley steered me towards RUGSUSA.com, and Annie came over one night and helped me pick out the right color.

I ordered it last month when David was on a trip to the Middle East (more on that soon), and Steve and Linda very kindly dropped everything and came over when it arrived, because they knew I was dying to get the living room set up.

You know you’re good friends when you let someone not only see underneath your sofas (which may or may not have been cleaned in a year), but also help you clean underneath your sofas. Even if it’s your mother-in-law, who feels free to say, “No wonder your kids have allergies!” So of course I took the opportunity to wipe the baseboards and mop the floors.

Some of us cleaned, others of us directed.

And here’s the finished product:

The colors look more brown in the photos for some reason, but are a nice muted rust in real life. I wanted something that added color to the room but was also neutral and not overly trendy since we’ll have it for years.

If you’re wondering, I thought I’d tell you about pricing.

I purchased the rug during two sales, and RUGSUSA offers free shipping, so an 8×10 cost $300. I did a lot of price comparing, and that was the best deal I found for what seems so far like a good quality rug that doesn’t shed. I bought the least expensive rug pad they sold for $50, but it didn’t come until a week later, and I just couldn’t wait that long!

So at Steve’s suggestion, we rolled out the rug and replaced the furniture, then in a year 6 months when it’s time to clean under my sofas again, we can add the rug pad. I’m very happy to report that with the exception of one corner, which we can easily tack down, the rug lays very flat as it is, and the cushioning is nice.

Still I’ll like having a little extra padding when we add the rug pad. I imagine my kids having a sleepever in front of the tree this Christmas eve, and that makes me happy.

The rug is low-pile, but as you can see looks faded from one angle and darker from another. This doesn’t bother me, and the little boys love making foot tracks in it. Best of all, it’s very forgiving. I vacuumed a week later only because I knew I should, not because it looked dirty. Woohoo!

Word to the wise: wool rugs are not forgiving when it comes to dirt. The boys’ fun black and white striped rug looks dirty every other day. Ah well.

We have no plans to change out our little $30 IKEA rug on the other side of the room because it still works great for us.

Here’s where the lesson in patience comes in.

We’ve owned this house for 4.5 years, and I wanted a new rug from the moment we moved in. For a year we used a rug brought home from India that gave the kids rug burns when they played on the floor and had a suspicious musty smell.

Then we upgraded to the IKEA rug I showed you, and I enjoyed it because it wasn’t practical, but it was pretty!

I’ve wanted a larger, nicer rug for years, but you just can’t do everything you want in your house all at once. It takes time.

All the best design blogs tell you that — you should never go on a shopping spree when you first move in and furnish your whole home. Because then you sort of root yourself to one particular style and one particular fashion season. The best homes evolve over years.

I’m so happy that ours has, mostly out of necessity, because we just didn’t have money to do everything I wanted to do, exactly when I wanted to do it.

First of all, my style has changed over the years. I’m not sure I would have picked this rug four years ago, because I needed to live in the space and add colors to the room slowly and see what we liked.

And second of all, please hear me: it is never worth it going into debt to decorate your house. Please don’t do it! We’ve committed not to, and lived with some really funny looking hand-me-down furniture for years and years (seriously, you should’ve seen hodge-podge we used in the first few homes we lived in), and you know what? It’s fine! We’re happy! I’d way rather make improvements slowly, than live under the burden of credit card debt.

I think that’s one reason I show you so many photos of our house, even though if you’ve followed our blog for awhile you must be sick and tired of seeing our living room.

I want to show you that it’s evolved over years. Many things have stayed the same. We make changes bit by bit, when we can (this post shows you what the room looked like 4.5 years ago!).

Improving our house over time teaches patience. It teaches delayed gratification. It teaches contentment. I still have a long way to go in learning these lessons, but I’ve grown a bit. It also teaches gratitude. Generally, you’re more grateful for things you have to wait for.

And so, a gift I didn’t expect was my family’s joy and wonder over something as simple as a new rug. The kids have commented on it again and again: how soft it is, how flat it lays when they tear through the house (ha!), how cozy it feels. They drag the coffee table aside daily to spread out Uno or LEGO’s and Magna-tiles and play together — or wrestle with their dad.

See why I call it the Magical Rug?