Kiss My Knits!

Let me say up front that just for this post, I figured out how to make thumbnails linking to larger pics, because these pics are not for those with germ or dirt phobias!

Our family seldom updates our furnishings because, there are other things we’d rather spend the money on, and because we generally feel that there’s not much point as long as we have pets and a young child. This leads to us living in with ten year old furniture which has been heavily abused by the cats and our daughter. The most egregious offender has to be the carpet in our computer room.

Squalor: squal·or (skw?l’?r) n. See illus.
This was originally a remnant of a carpet. We went to a flooring/rug store to see about getting a rug to cover the computer room when we first moved into our house, but it was too expensive. Instead we got a 6’8″ by 10′ unbound carpet piece out of the back of the warehouse. It was meant to go over padding which we didn’t have, and the edges unraveled a little, but it covered the floor and that was good enough for us.

Fast forward ten years later. It has permanently wrinkled due to the pile separating from the backing because our computer chairs run across it constantly. Since there is no padding beneath it, whatever dirt doesn’t get vacuumed up just filters down to the floor, to be ground between the rug and the hardwood by the motion of our chairs and feet. Pulling up the carpet reveals that even though I DO VACUUM REGULARLY, it’s like the Gobi desert under there. I even go so far as to lift the carpet and vacuum under it, but it’s still unbelievably dusty and sandy.

This has caused a great deal of wear and tear on the floor. You can see the line where the carpeted and uncarpeted floor meet. The darker has been uncovered. The lighter has been covered, and essentially been given a light, prolonged sanding by the carpet.

Now, in general, my husband thinks the house is a lost cause. This is largely because of what he mostly thinks is not enough space and what I mostly think is too much stuff. The truth lies somewhere in between, no doubt. I believe that the house needs a lot of work, but that there are some things we can do to make it more livable, even if it never reaches the point where we’d like it to be. It’s partly our personalities – he’s generally more pessimistic and I’m generally more optimistic. So while I am generally with him on the whole “it’ll only get trashed again for the next few years” timetable, there are some changes I’d like to see made that I think would really make things look better. Like the rug, which might look lovely in a photo spread for “Better Crack Homes and Gardens” but which is inappropriate in our house.

Enter Storehouse Furniture.

There’s a Storehouse Furniture store in Cotswold mall here in town. I had to meet a knitting client at the Starbucks there one day, and wandered over to the store afterward. One of the things they had was flor carpet tiles on sale for 40-70% off.

These things are cool. The tiles are about 2′ square, with a backing suitable for heavy traffic. We can customize them to our odd-sized space because they’re modular. We can pick up a couple of extra tiles in case one gets totally trashed. They can be taken up and washed in the sink. They’re both recycled and recyclable. They’re easy to transport. And most important of all, they’re cheap! Perfect!

So I stressed to my husband that this was important to me, and he came out with me to look at them. He agreed that this was a good opportunity with the price. They’re normally 15-30 bucks online, and the ones we wanted were on sale for $5 each. Twenty covered the area we wanted, so we were able to come up with an 8×10 rug for a hundred smackers. Score! We loaded up the trunk with 20 in assorted colors and brought them home.

Friday while our daughter was in school, we took up the old carpet and tossed it out. We swept, vacuumed, swept, vacuumed, scraped up any bits that had gotten wet and therefore hardened on the floor, swept, vacuumed, swiffered about eight times, and then it was clean. The individual tiles have a low-tack sticky spot on each corner. We lined them up, tacked them down, and voila!

lux·u·ry (l?g’zh?-r?, l?k’sh?-r?) n. See illus.
I cannot tell you how much better I feel about this room. The clutter issue is still there, but I no longer feel like I’m living in a dilapidated basement. And there was a bonus!

This was my computer chair. The back’s been broken for a good month. I’ve been propping it up and hoping it stays when I type. I knew we’d need to get a new one eventually, but eh, it’s functional, so that’s good enough.

After we did the carpet, my husband said, “let’s get you a new computer chair, RIGHT NOW!” He was psyched, and got me psyched, so down we went to Office Depot. I tried out some, but none were just perfect, so we were going to head to the Office Max that’s literally a quarter of a mile away. On the way out the door, we saw a chair exactly identical to my old one, except with a good back. There was a tag on it saying that it was the last one in stock, and therefore was only 44.95. Score again!

We put down the top on my husband’s convertible, loaded it in, and drove it home. So now our computer room, while still bordered with piles of old schoolwork and outdated computer equipment, looks much more livable. I wouldn’t be completely mortified to have someone see it now. Hopefully this momentum will keep up, and we can help the house be less squalid for very little money.

Ahhh… living like a normal person. It’s great.

ETA: No worries, clients, Jayne hat yarn and other knitting material is stored in a separate location in large plastic bags or sealed Sterilite containers. It’s all quite clean, I promise.