I’ll be moving out of my 5 bedroom house soon. It’s a bitter sweet thing because while my girlfriend and I are looking forward to having our own space (we currently share the house with another couple… more on that later) where we can yell at each other in peace, I can’t help but think of all the ways we may have made ourselves a little more tolerable to our room mates and vice versa. This inspired me to come up with a list of potential room mate grievances and solutions that can be ameliorated with a bit of consideration, poise, communication, and as always, a few mats.

Hallway noise – This is a no brainer. On opposite schedules? Say you have to be at the office at 8am. It’s 7am. You’re pacing back and forth in those GORGEOUS 3 inch heels your boyfriend got you. All sounds good on paper but then you realize your roomies are in the service industry. One’s a bartender, the other a server and they’re at this time on what is likely to be their fourth hour of sleep. To them your KLIK- KLAK-KLIK-KLAK back and forth down the hallway probably sounds like a construction crew is hammering out the floor to replace it! That’s when you throw big, beautiful plush olefin carpeted floor mats. Plush, thick, and inexpensive, those kliks and klaks will be minimized and much quieter with good entrance mats. They might make you a pie when you get home out of appreciation.

Tracking leaves – Seriously, fellas. MAJOR peeve of mine. Frequent smoker? Neither am I. As chores are generally divided amongst the individuals living in said residence, there is nothing more astonishingly irritating than the satisfaction of a clean tile floor, a vacuumed carpet, and the smell of cleanliness up in your space. Unless 10 minutes after you’re done, you see the little trails of dry leaves, twigs, and other crap already decoration your living room area rug from the incessant smoke breaks. Throw that piece of crap entry mat out and get yourself clean scrape mats for the outside of the door and a nice brush-and-clean for the inside. The double action scraping will be sure to put the hold on all that debris from your backyard. In-n-out will no longer be a euphemism for the annoyance one experiences from your friends/room mates having to take a smoke break from life every 20 minutes.

Exercise – There’s not a lot one can do when they share a common area. When the common living room area is the largest and most easily accessible to rock that Tae-Bo or whatever other dated exercise fab you’re into, it can be pretty annoying to hear the jumping and pouncing of intense cardio while that roomie sweat and fitness juice drips on to the rug I like to lay on with cats on occasion. Don’t be a jerk and get yourself exercise mats. Be it soft tiles, a folding mat, or even simple easy yoga mats, get something your roomies won’t have to think twice about laying down to watch tv on “that wet-spot’ over there.

Lastly, if it gets really, really, really bad. You can just move. Seriously, though, I’m gonna miss where I live.

There were few things that excited me as much, when I was a child, as cars and trains. Perhaps it was the details of train sets and matchbox cars, or the novelty of large machinery that I had no idea how it worked.  Moreover, how it could be scaled down for me to interact with rearrange and play with how I saw fit.  Kids area rugs would have made all the difference and I would have been learning too!

My main peeve was always that there was no universal play set carpeted floor mats of sorts, that would really engulf and put me in a zone. I was lucky enough to have a fairly large train set, however, I do remember the train set not being conducive to the epic car chases in my head (since it was all very scaled and as my dad described not a toy).

Heroic cops vs robbers or just a plain busy day of construction was pretty much always on tile or plain carpet. I know that if I had kids play mats to play on it would have been so much cooler.  That’s why one of the products I know I would’ve loved as a kid (especially as a Christmas gift) is our transportation and construction themed play carpet. The details are awesome! It is perfect when playing with toy cars, planes, trains, and even boats. Let your kids imagination run wild with a simple yet effective alternative to a full blown expensive play set.

Play carpet or carpeted floor mats are excellent for day care centers, schools or home use. The quality of the kids play rugs as well as the large selection of colors, sizes and themes to choose from make it easy to find the perfect interactive educational rugs that will no doubt make learning fun! So, look at any of our many kids play carpets and I’m sure you and your child will find a carpet that will enhance their enjoyment!