Kitchen Carpet

The house in Tempe was the victim of an unfortunate trend--it had kitchen carpet. Kitchen carpet was briefly in vogue during the seventies. A close relative of the carpeted cultural hall, it had the same advantages (quieter, softer) and the same disadvantages (carpet burns, collected stains). This particular carpet was patterned in brown, orange, and mustard yellow, designed to mask most stains, I suspect.

But not all. Together Gordon and I discovered some of the noncompliant stains. One was mustard. Although it nearly matched portions of the pattern, the bright yellow splotch made by the broken glass mustard bottle was clearly visible and, despite my scrubbings and verbal abuse, remained so. The broken honey bottle, on the other hand, was not visible, but obstinately sticky. I concluded that kitchen carpet was not my friend. (Such is our devotion to our children that, despite their experiments with gravity, we still love them and blame the carpet instead.)

And so it remained until we moved out. By then, 8 1/2 months pregnant, I agreed with David that a team of professionals should render the Sheppard's house beautiful again, and in addition to the rest, we had them shampoo the kitchen carpet. To our amazement, the mustard and the honey were gone without a trace. What a relief!

But I still hate kitchen carpet.