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Carpets, Mats and Other Objects Made Out Of Sewn Or Crocheted Materials


When I moved by myself before in a small but an all carpeted apartment, one of the first things that I noticed was that the small apartment I was renting has no space for a dining area. Essentially, the living room and the dining area were merged into a tiny carpeted room.

I don’t know what the floor plan is of a typical small apartment in every part of the world, but at least in Australia where there are many carpeted houses and apartments, the dining area is also included in the carpeting plan.

Why do you think I’m mentioning this? Because dining areas are not really suitable for carpeting. The reason? It’s because food and other drinking liquids gets spilled while people are eating or even cleaning the dining area especially the dining table.

I’m sure you can already imagine this, let’s assume that a can of coke or a plate of spaghetti together with all its sauces gets spilled on the carpet, not only will the carpet cleanup be horrendous, but your carpets would probably be even ruined.


CLEANLINESS

And so, we come to one of the uses of carpets. I don’t mean the expensive carpet lining the entire floors of an apartment or a house, but of small portable carpets which could be moved around at will.

These small portable carpets can be strategically placed beneath a dining table such that it would catch all the spilled food and drinking liquids which fall off a dining table. This would especially be handy if these small portable carpets have rubber layers.

These rubber layers would prevent any liquid from seeping underneath its surface. Let’s assume a can of coke or other staining liquid falls of a dining table, these small portable carpets would essentially trap these spilled food and liquids before they reach the actual floor carpets.

I see a lot of carpet vendors who mainly market these small portable carpets purely for their aesthetic appeal. I haven’t seen a carpet seller tell me that I can save on cleaning time and effort if I add these small portable carpets to my carpeted and uncarpeted floors.

Just imagine that small portable carpets once dirtied, can easily be picked up and cleaned in your kitchen sink or in your bathroom. You cannot do this with the permanently placed carpets laid out in your floors.


UTILITY AND AESTHETICS

I once worked in a hotel doing odd jobs such as maintenance. A few of the things I and other hotel workers did was to move around potted plants which might be a bit muddy because of the soil these potted plants have.

We also tended to have wet or muddied working shoes because of handling these potted plants. In order for the carpet in the hotel not to get dirty with what we were doing, we were asked to rip apart cardboard boxes and use them as floor matting to walk on.

Paper cardboard however tends to get destroyed if you step on it repeatedly, especially if your shoes or feet are wet. I think an enterprising carpet seller can market small portable carpets in place of these makeshift cardboard mattings in hotels and other establishments were aesthetics play an important part.

The good thing about carpets is that people tend to think of them as luxury items and don’t see that they are actually being used to prevent an establishment’s floors from being dirtied. Imagine a rainy day where your customer’s shoes or even bare feet can be wet or muddied.

I have seen several establishments use paper cardboards on such rainy days as matting for their floors. What these establishments do not know is that paper cardboards can be dangerous to walk on once they are already wet and wrinkled. People can trip or slip in them.


INSULATION

There a lot of places on earth were the temperature can be very cold or very warm. People have used air conditioning as well as a heater to stabilize the temperature inside their homes or establishment.

Besides using air conditioning as well as a heater, people have also used insulation in their homes to stabilize the temperature inside their homes and establishment. You might not know it, but carpets are good as insulation.

This does not mean that carpets are the best insulators as compared to the insulation materials being put inside and lining the walls and ceilings of an enclosed structure, but carpets can provide good insulation if properly utilized.

Have you ever felt the coldness or warmness of your feet after it has stepped in your wood, concrete, tiled or marbled floor at certain times? I’m sure a lot of people have. This is coldness permeates from the ground of your structure to inside your house for long periods which affects the temperature of your room or structure.

And for this reason, carpets are very useful. They serve as a layer of insulation between your room or structure from the coldness or warmness emanating from the ground. This is especially useful for structures located in extreme climates of cold and warm weather.


SAVING ON ELECTRICITY

Since one of the biggest recurring cost in many households of today is electricity, and air conditioning and heating appliances consume a fairly large amount of electricity, any small amount of savings courtesy of insulation is worth thinking over.

Let us assume for example office buildings. Many of the offices of today have already carpeted floors which help prevent the cold temperature generated by their air conditioning from escaping out of their offices.

But let us assume that even the walls are carpeted and the carpeted floors are also lined with strategically placed portable small carpets. This would further insulate the office from the warm temperature of the warm climate outside their surroundings.

This would also prevent the cold temperature they have in their office from escaping. This would mean that their air conditioning or even heating appliances do not have to work extra hard to maintain the office’s temperature climate.

You can just imagine the savings cost savings that this would bring to a company. Companies normally operate at an average of eight hours a day with a workweek comprising at the minimum of five days. As such it is important to save on office temperature maintenance as possible.


SAFETY

Perhaps one of the best known reasons why carpets are used is to prevent people from slipping on floors especially small children. There are also people who claim that falling on carpeted floors is not as painful as falling on uncarpeted floors.

You might say that portable small carpets are not safe either as people can slip on them. But assume this: What if you placed a small portable carpet on top of an existing carpet? Assume a scenario where a person falls in such a double layered carpet.

As you can see, there are broad applications for this. We can liken the setup to buying a rubber mat for your children so that they would have a bit of a protection if they do fall on the floor. Small portable carpets can almost do the same thing.

Although rubber mats offer better protection because they provide more padded cushioning on a per layer basis, it is undeniable that small portable carpets lasts much longer and are more child friendly. I don’t think portable carpets can easily be damaged by children.

Another thing about small portable carpets is that when proper drawings or patterns are put in them, they can blend in with the everyday aesthetics of your structure. As I have said before, many people still think of small portable carpets as vanity items and are not very useful.


MATS

Having talked about rubber mats, it is perhaps useful to mention that a lot of materials can be made into mats. Strips of old clothes and plastic shopping bags for example can be used to create mats.

If you are a person involved in creating and selling mats, it would be useful if you would correlate them with mats made of all types of materials. I won’t go to all these materials in this article, I would strictly concentrate on just two: strips of old clothes and plastic shopping bags.


PLASTIC SHOPPING BAGS AS MATS

There are people in America who crochet used plastic shopping bags as bags for their own use as well as sleeping mats for the homeless. Just imagine if these crocheted sleeping mats for the homeless could be created in bigger sizes and marketed as an alternative to carpets.

For an example of how these used/recycled shopping bags are crocheted into mats and other handicraft related materials, just go to YouTube and type for example the search keyword “plastic shopping bags as mats.”

I have seen videos of people creating not only mats, but also rugs, baskets, bags and other objects which can be made by sewing or crocheting them. If these people can do it using only simple crocheting tools, so could you.

Imagine a real sized mattress being made out of purely crocheted and used/recycled plastic shopping bags. This is just a matter of stacking a few mats together and connecting them together.

The beauty of this is that we don’t have to burn used plastic bags in order to recycle them. As you might know, recycling used plastic bags by burning them can be very dangerous if people inhale the fumes created by these plastic burning processes.


STRIPS OF OLD CLOTHES AS MATS

It is a known fact that the clothing industry is one of the biggest pollution generating industries in the world today. The clothing industry is known for shady labor practices as well as the wastage and pollution of water.

It is no big secret that the companies involved in “Fast Fashion” have a very negative image to a lot of people especially environmentalists. Stories of clothing inventories being burned just so these companies can dispose of them have made headlines.

That is why it is for the best that used and disposed clothes are recycled. One of the ways that used clothes can be recycled is by using them as covering materials. Disposed old jeans for example are used as wall insulation materials.

If disposed jeans can be used as insulation materials, then it follows that old clothes can also be used as insulation, even as a poor man’s insulation material. But let us consider something more practical.

My family always buy on a regular basis rounded rags which are made up of sewn strips of clothing. What I have noticed is that these rags attain a certain rigidity the thicker they are, about a quarter of inch in thickness.


RECYCLED STRIPS OF CLOTHES WITH DESIGNS

I guess what I’m trying to say is that strips of old clothes or cloth castoffs could be used as carpets and mats. And if one is creative enough, they can even create mats and carpets which have designs on them.

Imagine a carpet or a mat made out of cloth with a mosaic design? If I can think about mats and carpets made out of recycled strips of clothes with designs in them, imagine what a real creative person can design them with.

Imagine if the seller of these rounded rags would instead sell them as cup or plate coasters. This would mean that a once disposable product would become a utility or an art object. This could result in more profit to the rag seller.


CONCLUSION

We might have talked about a few materials to create carpets, mats and other objects. But there is a central idea to all of them, all of these materials can be sewn or crocheted in the comfort of one’s own home.

Even the materials like strips of disposed old clothes and plastic shopping bags can be bought cheaply or even salvaged from other people at no cost at all. This is an ideal hobby or business to anyone interested in sewing and/or crocheting.




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