Living Room Joy

We moved around a lot the first five years we were a unit - three apartments before we were ready to buy.  It was very apparent that we would not be staying in any of them for long (too Pittsburgh, too pricey, too awful) and so we sat on a lot of things we didn't hate, but didn't love either.  One example is a brown and blue rug that we bought six years ago in Pittsburgh, when we were engaged.  It was an indoor/outdoor carpet, and suited our needs in the subsequent apartments well.  We got here, and knew this was going to be our home for the next five years, minimum, and I knew that I was over the rug.

The Kon-Mari method, detailed in the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, has been working for us in some areas, like clothing.  We're not people who buy fancy clothes, and I buy a lot of mine in resale and consignment shops, because I hate waste and these are in reasonable enough shape.  Meanwhile, Alex is a fancy-man, and by that I mean we buy a bunch of decent (mostly non dry clean, definitely no-iron) clothes for him at a time and go with that.  I would rather buy some fruit with our dollars.  So, my sweet husband read about Kon-Mari, and we suddenly had a space-cleaner here.  Which is great!  But he advanced from his well-selected clothing to things, and I am still stuck on where do I put these laundry supplies so that I don't lose it later.


And in the living room, all cooped up this winter, I knew the carpet had to go.  It was too dark, and our more recent sofas (by the showrooms of Craigslist, thank you very much) did not exactly cooperate.  We'd purchased a smaller, lighter rug, at the people's store of Target, but the cats.... let us know how much they liked it.  So it did not go back out when we moved here, but the blue did and I remembered how much I did not want it for the living room.  We discussed buying one, and searching resale, and new cat-friendly materials like FLOR tiles and sisal, etc.  But we're frugal.  And there's really not anything wrong with the old one, other than not working anywhere like I want it to.

I realize how difficult I might sound, but I was just over the brown-blue, and I finally told Alex, that I had to Kon-Mari it.  "IT IS NOT BRINGING ME JOY."  I think he understood then.  We found one that mostly fit the bill at Costco - which happens to stock indoor/outdoor rugs every year after Christmas and is where our last one came from.  We didn't pull the trigger, and then when my mom was in town after a small surgery (carpal tunnel, and she is fine now) she and my brother and I went to Costco.

Also, my brother and I are not really allowed to go to Costco, according to his person, but that's too bad, because I have a car and we have weekdays free together, sometimes.  So I found the rug, which was on sale (at Costco, that's like the lottery!) and had my cash money ready, and my mom sweetly offered to buy it for my upcoming birthday.  I felt a bit funny about it, and mulled it while Trev and I found lots of other things we had been meaning to find, and then Alex gave the thumbs up on the rug and I let her buy it because the year you buy a home is so freaking expensive, it's not funny.

We went out carousing for pizza and beer (I had a salad and only a little pizza) and came home, then after she left Alex and I put it out.  It is a little narrower than our previous rug, and I love it.  A few weeks went by and we went to a local carpet shop and had a carpet pad cut to fit under it, for a whopping $5 per square yard - and it is puppy and animal slave heaven, so cushy and lovely.

Of course, if you give a girl a carpet, she will probably want some curtains....