Online Rug Shopping for Dummies

For someone who's owned three houses, I'm a pretty inexperienced rug buyer. Our only rug at our last house was in our living room. It was a giant antique dark red oriental rug...all worn down flat and threadbare in some places, and I loved it lots. Then our dog Oliver got really old and started peeing on it, so we finally had to get it of it.

I've been meaning to buy some rugs for this house ever since we moved into it. But I've been utterly paralyzed with indecision. Some rugs are really expensive. And some rugs are really cheap, but that makes one wonder if they are also really crappy. Also there are SO MANY RUGS. Different colors! Different materials! Different patterns! HOW to decide?

Having a baby who is now old enough to sit and play with toys and who is approaching mobility is what finally motivated me to just suck it up and buy a rug already. Babies can't hang out on your cold, hard terra cotta tile!

Here's how it went down. Rugs USA was having a big 4th of July sale (Rugs USA is one of those sites that's always having a big sale, but the biggest ones are to go with holidays, it seems. And they have USA right there in their name, so that's the biggest sale of all! I just made that part up. I have no idea). They had a bunch of rugs at 75% off, so I started looking around. But every rug I liked seemed to be out of stock.

Frustrated, I went over to Overstock.com and started looking there instead. I found the "Hand hooked Alexa Moroccan Trellis Wool Rug" there, 6' x 9', for around $230. The rug looked very familiar, and I'm pretty sure I've looked at it and considered buying it half a dozen times over the past year. I'd been hesitant about a wool rug with all the dogs and cats; I'd thought about getting an indoor/outdoor rug instead.

But I was so tired of looking at rugs. So I ordered this one. In gray, which, according to a lot of the reviews, would actually be more gray blue. So I was prepared. The reviews also said that the rug looked great, was surprisingly thick, and shed a lot for a long time. But, then, so do all of our animals.

For some reason, after ordering my rug, I felt compelled to go back to Rugs USA one more time.

And there I discovered that they had the exact same rug I had just ordered. Only 75% off.  Which made it around $80 cheaper than what I had just paid Overstock for it.

In a panic, I rushed back to Overstock and logged in to my account....and was very relieved to discover that it was not too late to cancel my order. Phew!

The moral of this story is not that you should order from Rugs USA instead of Overstock (I've had good luck with ordering stuff from Overstock in the past and am a big fan). It's that you should comparison shop very carefully. Because you might save $80 if you do.

My rug took forever to get here. Or, like, 2 1/2 weeks, I think. Overstock, it should be noted, had promised to have it here much more quickly. But waiting an extra couple of weeks was worth $80 to me (Abe did not fall over and get a concussion on the hard tile while we waited, or my perspective would probably be different).

That's my only complaint about Rugs USA. I love my rug. I was afraid it was going to be too pattern-y next to the octagonal tile, but it is, IMO, not. It is indeed nice and thick and seems like great quality for the price. It is definitely at least as blue as gray (Rugs USA calls it blue gray). It does shed a lot. I vacuum it every day, and that is not at all overkill. But I don't mind. Because it's so soft and pretty.

Unfortunately, my baby is now perpetually covered with fuzz.

But that's better than a head injury, right?

Let's look at my new rug again (also my baby):

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