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What We Tested This Week: Ruggable’s Machine-Washable Rugs
Who This Is Perfect for: Families, pet households, germaphobes, wine drinkers, and anyone who likes to actually live in their house.
Carpet is gross. Honestly, it just is. You wouldn’t wear the same socks and shoes every day for a year, without showering, would you? ESPECIALLY NOT NOW. To me, living with wall-to-wall carpet is the equivalent to walking on a city sidewalk without wearing shoes — everything that you stepped on outside is all mushed into one gross piece of fabric that you allow your bare skin to touch.
We live in a time where even doctors and nurses take their shoes off outside, since transmission of COVID-19 is possible via those surfaces. The risk is low, but even the WHO recommends that people with small children (who are of crawling age) take precautionary measures and leave shoes outside.
I was ready to succumb to a life of cold hardwood floors (so that I could disinfect them regularly) before I learned about Ruggable. They make machine-washable area rugs!
If you’re anything like me, someone who loves the look and feel of carpet in my home, but can’t handle the bacteria/dirt/hellscape predicament, what do you do? Do you get a carpet cleaner every 3 months? Just live with bacteria denial?
Carpet is even more gross if you have babies (hello, spit-up, soggy Cheerios, and other bodily functions) or pets (lord only knows what my dog eats on her walks — much less steps in!). It just never feels clean.
On top of what you can see, what about what you can’t see? Like pollen, dead skin cells, dust, and bacteria? Got allergies? Your carpet is probably making it worse. According to Philip Tierno Jr., Ph.D., a microbiologist and immunologist at New York University Langone Medical Center, “Your carpet probably contains about 200,000 bacteria per square inch, making it 4,000 times dirtier than your toilet seat.”
OK, YOU'RE CONVINCED NOW, RIGHT?
But how does Ruggable work?
Well, the rugs are a two-part system. They have a top layer that literally peels off the rug-pad base and can be tossed in the washing machine. You’re probably thinking, “Oh, well, they’re probably only small rugs.” Wrong! Their biggest size is 8 feet by 10 feet.
I immediately assumed they were only going to allow their rugs to be washed on a super delicate cycle. Welp, I was totally wrong. You can wash their standard print rug covers on a regular cycle! Just be sure to use cold water.
But wait, cold water only? Don’t you need hot water to get clean? Nope, not with the way they are made! The rug “topper” is made of a naturally stain-resistant triple-layered polyester, which does not mean it's fully stainproof — but again, that's why you can wash these!
Still not convinced that Ruggable is right for you? I'll leave you with this: Tierno, the microbiologist we mentioned before, says, "Rugs are botanical and zoological parks where hundreds of thousands of different types of species live." HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. He says there are communities of E. coli, salmonella, staphylococcus, and other bacteria in our carpets. And that unless you’re getting a steam-cleaning of your carpet every 6 months, it’s time to invest in machine-washable rugs.
I can’t stop thinking about that “carpet is dirtier than a toilet bowl” comparison, can you?
Shop Ruggable's Area Rug Designs:
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