Making the Cut: Rug in Kids Room
Making the Cut is a series on the smart and simple solutions that have (or have not) earned a place in our home.
Executive summary: I am unsurprisingly not much of an impulse-buyer, but it worked out for me (and the kids) on this occasion — I swapped out our old rug in the kids’ room for a “town play” rug that my 5yo can drive his cars on. Multipurpose items have a special place in my minimalist heart and home!
My complaints about the weather in California are pretty minimal. But it has been raining what seems like every other day during the winter, with a storm gusting through every other week. This is good news after the droughts, but wet days make parenting my 5yo and 1yo that much harder, as we rely on doing activities outside of the house to get their energy out. I’ve come up with a plan for the wet weekends when we have both kids at home: we go to IKEA on rainy Saturday mornings, and the mall on rainy Sunday mornings. Behold my exciting life!
My kids really do take after me in some ways: they love running around IKEA, which I call my “adult Disneyland.” We’ve taken a handful of family trips to IKEA this winter, and I’m usually extremely restrained in what I get. Some cookies, or art supplies, or a new shower curtain (this might be a post for another day, but I am at a loss over how the curtain keeps getting mildewey even though we dry it out every day!!) On our last trip, however, a new rug caught my eye as we were walking through the kids section. I was not necessarily in the market for a new rug, but it’s true that I haven’t been psyched about the “barf rug” in the kids room for the last couple of years (see kids bedroom tour here for an explanation of the “barf rug”). It was an impulse buy for sure, not in keeping with my usual decision-making standards, but I couldn’t think of any major objections in the five minutes I had to chase the kids around the children’s section before they dashed off elsewhere. So I threw the rug (the Vallaby, FYI) in the cart and hoped for the best.
Our new rug at home in the kids’ room.
After we got home, I pulled the old rug aside and unrolled the new one. I immediately liked how the pastel-y shades looked in the room, and my son was intrigued by the design: a little town with roads, buildings, and natural features. He is a big fan of train tracks (which he plays with at school and at the grandparents’ house), but I haven’t let him have a set at home because he leaves the pieces scattered all over the floor for us to step on. I consider this rug the next best thing: it’s true he can’t build his own road/track, but that’s only half the fun anyway. The other half is grabbing all his little toy cars and driving them all over this town. I’m happy because I can’t hurt myself stepping on assorted pieces of track, and he’s happy because he basically has a new toy. And we can easily move it anywhere for him to play with: when little sister is taking her afternoon nap in the bedroom, we can pick up the rug and put it in the living room for my son to play with during his “quiet time” there. He also almost immediately started coming up with “creative” new setups, like bunching up the rug to make “hills” for the cars to drive over or slide down (buttressed by Mega Bloks), which has provided additional entertainment. As with any new toy, the initial excitement wears off in time, but whenever this rug is not being played on, it still serves the purpose of being decor.
The kids started playing on the rug immediately, although little sis serves the role of Todzilla to demolish everything in her path whenever she stomps through.
My only complaint about the rug so far is that it slides very easily over our carpet. It has a rubber backing, so I’d think it would stay in place better, but our previous rug also inched across the floor, just at a slower rate. This rug moves half an inch with every step we take. All the rugs in our home slide in the same direction, so it’s either our flow of traffic, or the grain of the carpet or something. In any case, it doesn’t usually bother me, but it can get annoying to have the ground literally shifting and bunching under my feet whenever I’m walking across the rug.
I’m glad I didn’t live to regret my impulse buy. I’m usually meticulous about getting the measurements right, scouting for the best piece, etc., but I’ve had to make faster decisions with the kids harrying me through stores (and life). I certainly don’t plan on acquiring a new object every time we find ourselves at IKEA on a rainy Saturday, but every so often, it is fun to throw caution to the winds! And that’s as exciting as my life ever gets these days!