A recent post by Fran, at Being Me, hit a familiar
note for me. She writes of her hall carpet and the demands it makes on her
time.
I too thought
a dark blue carpet would be a great idea. How could something the shade of
indigo show dirt? And I was right. In all the years that I had it, it appeared
grime free. For all we knew, there was enough soil lurking deep in our rug’s lush
roots to re-sod the entire Oklahoma
dust bowl.
What I hadn’t
factored in was my orange cat, or the fact the woman of the house (who shall
remain nameless) also has shedding tendencies. There was also the day-to-day
traffic back and forth through the house and to the upstairs, trailing string,
threads, and whatever else failed to fall off in the kitchen on the way.
Then there’s the fact that the
carpet was the path to the laundry area in the basement, the household lint
headquarters. On banner days, a forgotten tissue would transform in the wash
into flakes of confetti that would drift down merrily behind us as we carried
our baskets upstairs.
On the plus side, one year when I
was painting the front door the same shade, I spilled the entire can and
no one was the wiser. ( When home projects bring on the blues )
The rug’s superhuman Magneto-like
grip on the flotsam and jetsam of our lives drove me at first to kneel on the
floor and scrub with the small hand attachment on my vacuum. That lost its charm pretty
quickly and next came a massive – and expensive - upright vac so powerful that
for safety I put the cats outside when I used it.
After 15 or so years of dealing
with either constant vacuuming or living with a floor crosshatched with lint,
fibers, and string, the final irony was that when we moved this year, we pulled
the whole thing up to lure buyers with the pristine hardwood floors beneath.
I hope you have had at least a small bit of time to enjoy those hardwood floors! :-)
ReplyDeleteProbably hitting a chord with much of America. My first house, when the girls were two and four, had hardwood floors. Little feet make much noise on hardwood. I despised it, and, to my mother-in-law's complete disgust, carpeted it. I even carpeted the kitchen and bathrooms, to add insult to injury. When I sold the house twenty years later, for my asking price, three times what I paid, those hardwood floors dazzled. My total selling expense was pulling up the carpeting and painting the front door.
ReplyDeleteWhen we re-did the bedrooms at our previous house, we put in deep colour carpets which looked really great ... after vacuuming. I have never vacuumed so much.
ReplyDeleteWe are leaning towards a return to hardwood. Our very light coloured carpet was not a good choice. And maps our lives with some permanent stains.
ReplyDeleteI love hardwood floors, run the vacuum, run a damp mop, done. I currently have linoleum or vinyl, not sure which, it was here when I moved in and it's a light colour, with lighter coloured tracks where I walk from room to room. I should probably scrub it one of these days.
ReplyDeleteIt's like those old bathroom suite colours that used to be popular - dark green and dark brown. I mean, who thought of that? Toothpaste spots ... soap smears ... drip marks ... You can clean a sink like that and then five minutes later, yuk!
ReplyDeleteI grew up with carpeting in the house except for the family room which had hardwood floors. all the houses I lived in as an adult had hardwood floors which I loved. the first thing I did when we bought the country house was pull up the nasty carpeting and had the hardwood floors underneath refinished. they are so much easier to keep clean and don't absorb odor like carpeting.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny how carpet was "the thing" for so long, when hardwood floors are so beautiful? I would much rather have wood than carpeting.
ReplyDelete