When we first bought the property, I began looking for braided rugs to cover the cabin’s bare wood floors. I remember braided rugs fondly from growing up. Mom and Dad put a large one on the floor of the first bedroom I remember. That warm, comforting oval provided our primary indoor play space for years.
To my pleasant surprise, rug technology has progressed since then. I found beautiful braided rugs made from polypropylene. They look like old fashioned wool or cotton braided rugs, but are much more durable and much easier to clean. The manufacturer suggests hauling them outside and hosing them off!
Which is what we do—after a fashion.
Wash day for the upstairs rug (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
Since we seemed locked in a pattern of monsoon-intensity rains, we decided to take advantage of the situation, and clean our rugs.
We pulled the rug outdoors into the rain and left it for a while to soak and rinse. We joked that doing this should bring us sunny weather in a hurry, too soon to finish the rinsing.
That’s exactly what happened. Within an hour of soaping the rug, the rain stopped, and the sun came out!
Thankfully, a proper rinsing rain followed that brief break. And, the weather turned sunny after we’d finished washing.
Now that the upstairs rug is clean, we need to tackle the bigger one from the downstairs living area. After a few days of warmth and sunshine, we expect more rain. These big chores would be a lot bigger and harder if the rugs had been made from any other material.