Thanks for the post by Linda Branson
When we first moved into this house, one of the first things that I put on the wish list was to carpet the living room. The previous owners had put tile on the floor, and although tile is easy to keep clean, I felt that the room felt stark and uninviting. My husband was very good at finding other things to spend our money on though, for the first couple of years of our marriage and of living in this house. Until the year our first baby was born.
Suddenly he became quite aware of just how cold the floor really was. After all, he was sitting on the floor a lot, playing with the baby, and he could feel the coolness for himself. That really wasn’t an issue in the summertime, but summer is really short here and winter is really long. Once the baby started crawling it was fairly obvious that we needed to do something about the floor. Fortunately my hubby got a bonus check for Christmas that enabled us to go to town and buy some new carpeting. The carpet that we bought was a multi-colored sculptured carpet called “English Leather.” Although I’m not normally a big fan of brown tones, I liked the warmth of that carpet because there was a reddish quality to it, and it reminded me of the color of the riding saddles and bridles at my cousin’s farm where I had spent some time in my youth. So just looking at the carpet gave me a “warm and fuzzy” feeling, with memory triggers of some of the best times of my life.
Right around that same time we bought a brand new vacuum cleaner because the carpet installer told us that we should have a vacuum cleaner with a beater bar in it if we wanted to extend the life of the carpet. He explained that the right way to vacuum a carpet was to vacuum back and forth over the same spot four times before moving on to the next area. He explained that we needed to do it that many times in order to loosen up the dirt particles so that they would get sucked up into the vacuum. He also explained that a lot of dirt is very sandy and that sand is very sharp. Letting the dirt stay in the carpet will shorten the life of the carpet fibers because every time you walk over it the friction of the carpet fiber over the dirt wears down the carpet fiber. I think that was good advice, the carpet has lasted a very long time!
Categories: Around the House, Family and friends, Home Improvement, Life, Memories, Opinion, Shopping, Tips & Words of Wisdom |
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