Bottom Rug | Top Rug | Coffee Table | Gray Malin Nude Beach Print
Hi Jordan!
Is there any reason to buy an outdoor rug? Like, besides looks? I have an uneven concrete patio so it probably wouldn’t work anyway…but I’m just wondering why people use them?
Hard-hitting questions here!
x
Rachael
Q. Hi Rachael! That is indeed a question for the ages. And my answer is that, in my experience, outdoor rugs are wonderful…if you use them indoors.
Rugs have been quite the dramatic conundrum for me over the years. I love them, but I have dogs. And children. And a habit of spilling things like coffee and wine wherever I go. Which means I can’t own rugs.
But I am also stubborn, and so I continue to buy them – each time, of course, declaring that finally (finally!) I have found The Rug That Solves My Rug Problem.
A pink Southwestern-style rug.
(I no longer own any of them.)
A couple of years ago, I decided to buy a Kelim rug for our patio: I bought a really cool woven design made of recycled plastic straws. It was pretty affordable, and brightened up our deck space a lot. And then my dogs peed on it, and various detritus (food, leaves, what have you) got caught in it, and now it is in my garage, where I assume it will live until my next Marie Kondo-ing session. It’s not that outdoor rugs are a bad purchase – it’s just that you have to be realistic about how the weather and your lifestyle are going to impact them, and ok with the fact that they may not last more than a season.
Outdoor rugs that you put inside, though? Game-changer.
After spending far, far too much money on the aforementioned rugs-that-I-no-longer-own, I broke. I need a rug in my living room because it looks kinda ridiculous without one, but I am SO OVER freaking out every time a dog pees on it, because that happens every single f-ing day (why). And so I went to Target, and bought an outdoor jute rug for $149, reasoning that it’d be durable and easy to clean, and also cheap enough that I wouldn’t mind buying a new one if need be, and I put it in my living room. Then I bought a second outdoor jute rug – a $89 (!!!) round one that I layered over the first – to up the style factor a bit.
And now? Now I have found the Rug(s) That Solves My Rug Problem.
GET THE LOOK
Pick up one of these…
And then layer one of these on top.
P.S. I have recently rediscovered the joy of Super Mario Bros, and now it is all that my son and I do. My daughter’s contribution to this is to hug me around the neck extremely tightly whenever I am just about to slay King Koopa. (She needs to stop doing this.)
Photos by Kim Ebbets.
