Back when we lived in Hawaii, we bought a beach-side house with white carpets. White carpets. Beach side. I’d extracted a promise from my husband to replace them shortly after we moved in, but some more pressing expense popped up every time we were ready. As you can imagine, those carpets didn’t stay white for long.

I thought I’d rid my life of that problem when we sold our house on the island, but wouldn’t you know it: the house in Kansas that I fell in love with had white carpets, too. So I extracted the same promise — to replace them with something more child-friendly pronto. That was three years ago and, as you can imagine, these carpets are no longer really white, either.

Unfortunately, replacing them is well beyond our means at this point. Besides, with my son still spill-prone at 7 years old (and my husband equally spill-prone despite being 40 years older), I just don’t think it’s a good idea to shell out thousands of dollars on new carpeting that I know, without a doubt in my mind, will be permanently stained within days of installation.

Not that you can actually see how dingy our carpets actually are now that I’ve taken to decorating in what could most kindly be called a multi-layered approach. News stains I can’t get out now get hidden under cheap area rugs, which not only hide the stain but completely change the look of the room in an instant.

Kool-Aid spill in the family room? No problem: I found a modern art-style rug that picked up the room’s blues and browns and tied it all together nicely, with no one the wiser. The dingy, gray path my husband and I have worn into the carpet in our formal living room as we tread between our bedroom and the kitchen coffee maker each morning is now hidden beneath an Oriental-style runner that brought a luxe, global style to a room that used to be quite bland.

Last summer I decorated my son’s room in a transportation theme, complete with a magnetic paint stripe where he sticks his Matchbox cars (to which I’ve glued magnets) so it looks like a highway circling his room. He promptly drew a huge firetruck on his carpet — in Magic Marker, no less — to go along with the theme.

Once I’d calmed down, I figured what’s been done was done so I’d just ignore it. And I could have, too, until he decided earlier this year that he wanted his decor changed to an Army camouflage theme. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a cheap rug with a camo design? I do. It took months, but I finally did find one.

At some point, I realize, I’m going to have bought so many area rugs that it might have been less expensive to have gone ahead and replaced the carpet. That, at least, is what my husband’s trying to get me to believe now that all of the home furnishing stores are offering holiday specials on carpet installation. But then I’d be back to the same old problem: with a new rug acquiring new stains regularly. So what’s the point?

The place looks great… as long as you don’t look under the carpet.

Monday, November 19th, 2007, 10:34 am   |   My Venomous Life  |  RSS feed Comments and pings are currently closed.