I Got Hypnotized Into Buying a Rug

It's been a loooooong while since I actually updated about things happening around our house (whoops, remember when I painted the kitchen but have never posted final pictures — someday!), but we do have two new fun arrivals I had to share. One is our precious cat Freya, a 1-year-old tabby we adopted in January who is basically our obsession. The other is a new rug for the den!

I still loved the pattern of our flatweave IKEA rug but it had really seen better days. It had stains of all manner and shape. It was surprisingly hard to clean. And Sean honestly has always been wishing we had a rug with thicker pile in this room.

So when I did our taxes, I suggested we buy an inexpensive rug with some of our tax return and Sean was on board! I scoured all the usual sites, along with Facebook Marketplace and secondhand stores, and developed a crush on the Edessa Tribal Medallion rug that was on super sale. I had been really attracted to oriental-style rugs with pink, and a few of our art pieces in the living room have pink. But what sold me on this rug was that it has almost all the colors in it, so we have a ton of flexibility to change our decor or put it in a different room. Sean liked it, too, and I congratulated myself on my good taste.

But I had to laugh when I realized I have seen this rug dozens of times on the Instagram feed of Young House Love. They recommended it in a different color last year and since then, they've shared every picture people have tagged of it, calling it the "magic rug." I swear, I didn't even realize I had bought the magic rug until I'd done it! I think they hypnotized me with their Insta Stories!

We took the advantage to steam mop the floors with my trusty Bissell PowerFresh Lift-Off steam mop, and then laid out the rug and gave it a pass with the vacuum. It's a big adjustment from the modern pattern of the IKEA rug, but I'm loving it! It's not a crazy tall pile, but it's comfy under foot.

I mean, it looks so good with my book!

And it looks so good with my cat! We'll probably keep both of them.