This is the dumbest home decor item ever.

Please don't write to me about this. :-)))) I want to be loved by all of you and I don't often voice my opinion about how I dislike some kind of home decor or design feature here. Right?

Well, I hope I don't come off very negative. I do think there is a place for almost anything, except maybe short upper cabinets, side backsplashes, 15 kinds of flooring in an open plan space, spotty granite and perhaps plush, high-pile carpet on stairs....to name a few. :-)

However, this is one item I can't seem to wrap my head around. I mean, why????

Why, why, why, why, why......are people doing this little dinky sheepskin rug all over the place?

First of all, have you ever lived with a sheepskin rug or a flokati, for any period of time?

I have.

I have in this showhouse room right here. At the end of 3 weeks, it was so gross from people walking on it, so obviously filled with little specks of stuff and even kind of sticky from all the humidity in the air down here, I couldn't WAIT to get rid of it.

Teenage girl bedroom with flokati rug - Carla Aston

Teenage girl bedroom with flokati rug - Carla Aston

First of all, you can't vacuum that thing. It's pile is way too high. You have to shake it out. 

And if you think you're going to get all the dust, bits of dirt, hair, flies, and other objects that happen to get caught in this web of fluff with a good shake, I can tell you, you're wrong.

It looked so appealing in that teenage girl bedroom. :-) I just thought it was so cute and Bohemian, so typical for a teenage girl to have a flokati in her room.

Teenage girl bedroom with flokati rug

It looked like a cloud. It looked dreamy, which was exactly the way I wanted it to look.

I envisioned her friends plopping down on it, talking, doing their nails. These days, they would be on Snapchat or texting. 

If you don't know much about a flokati, it is a rug made of sheep's wool. Here's an article I wrote about it years ago.

I distinctly remember a middle aged man coming in that room with his family and he chuckled. He said he hadn't seen one of those since since his college days. He had taken his mom's rug for his dorm room. He also said it had to be torched when he moved out as it was filthy!

Sheepskin or Flokati?

What I am talking about here in this post, however, is the small sheepskin variety, not the flokati that is sheep wool, woven into a rug. Really though, they perform the same. It's all sheep wool, right?

Although with a flokati, the sheep only gets shorn. :-(

Baaaaaa....

Now, if you have a man-made version, I guess you can wash it in the washer, but you cannot wash a sheepskin. You have to get it dry cleaned. I'm not sure about you, but my dry cleaner doesn't take in anything that looks out of the ordinary. They wouldn't even clean my mother-of-the-groom dress last year because the top had sparkles on it. :-/

The thing that gets me now, is how people are using them as little tiny rugs. It reminds me of a fuzzy bathmat. 

Or maybe, you've seen them as throws over a chair in lieu of a cushion, to sit on. Like a viking's fur perhaps?

What if you had on black pants? Or shorts!?! I'm starting to itch just thinking about it.

Any allergies? Bet one of these won't help.

I have this thing about decor that feels like it is "in the way" of how you would live in a space.

If you are a senior citizen and there is one of these little rugs lying around on the floor, you'd better sweep it aside or you'll soon be calling 911 because you've tripped and fallen and you can't get up.

And, if you have one of these beside your bed, do your feet really hit it first thing in the morning? Because at 16-18-24" wide, I can only imagine that it is mostly a miss.

Maybe this should be the best way to use sheepskin. No?

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