A. and I live in a pretty small apartment, though you wouldn’t know it by the amount of thought and searching I put into furnishing and decorating it. Some of that was because I wasn’t working when we first moved, so I made it into my “job” to hunt down the perfect pieces, and some of it was because it’s actually really hard to find small furniture, since big, overstuffed seems to have been in for awhile. But some of it was just by choice, for sure.
Now that our apartment has been lived in for almost a year, it’s basically done. But all that means is it frees up mental space for me to agonize over every small decision we DO get to make about it! This led to a low point in my pinning life the other night when I spent half an hour pinning pictures of….doormats.
A. and I have a little brown doormat that we used inside the door at our old apartment. (It’s designed to be an indoor one, I think.) But because of the weather stripping around our door here, we were unable to put it inside, because the door wouldn’t open over it. So it is outside. But every time there’s an level of wind, I come home to find it folded over on itself and/or blown 3 doors down the balcony hallway of our apartment building! Clearly we need a new one, a heavier one that is actually designed to live outside. I joked to A. that I could probably search Pinterest and find entire boards dedicated to doormats….but instead of doing that, I created one myself! (For what it’s worth, I think Pinterest itself contributes to my willingness to agonize over small design decisions. The ability to create boards of beautiful images makes it more fun than annoying! Plus I’ve been reading more DIY blogs lately, so I have decor on my mind.)
Here are some of the contenders:
The beauty of Pinterest is that, when I posted this first one from Target, my cousin commented saying she has this doormat and has been disappointed in it because it’s pretty flimsy. It’s like real-time online reviews! So even though I like the looks of it, I’m ruling it out based on her evaluation.
This second one may be my favorite, but it unfortunately doesn’t qualify for our Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping!!!
This next one from Amazon is really sweet:
And this one to me is delightfully kitschy:
This recycled flip flop mat is really cool, but I have a feeling it might have the same flimsiness problem we have now:
And finally, another striped on similar to the first. I like the looks of it, but at only $12.99, I’m skeptical of its quality.
So there you have it. I have now devoted more time to pinning and blogging about doormats than I ever would have imagined possible. The morning after my pinning extravaganza A. asked me if I had picked a doormat. I said, “Oh. I guess I hadn’t really thought about actually picking one! I was just having fun pinning!” But now I suppose I will give it some real thought. I swung through Home Goods on my way home from work the other day to see if they randomly had any, and they didn’t, so I guess online is a good way to go.
I know I can’t be the only one who’s gotten caught in the Pinterest trap. Is there anything lately that you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on just because it was fun?
And most importantly, which doormat would you pick?!?
