Save Money: Make Your Own Rug Pad

This post is about saving some money so that, instead of spending your cash unnecessarily on a pre-made rug pad, you can buy one of these…

…and send it to ME so that I can wear that shirt while I have meaningful conversations with my cat and simultaneously earn another badge to pin on my Crazy Cat Lady Club beanie. After that, I can work toward the one where I buy my cat a matching shirt and then get our portrait taken by a professional photographer called Mrs. Snuggles.

Or something.

But if you don’t want to contribute to my downward shame spiral, I’ll share how I am going to save enough money to buy one of those shirts for myself anyway, beginning with this new thing I discovered called rug padding by the yard.

The rug that we needed a pad for is an Indoor/Outdoor rug from Marshall’s that I inadvertently bought for our bathroom, intending to use it elsewhere. But being indoor/outdoor, it can be hosed off with soap and water AND is supposedly resistant to mold and mildew.

This seemed like a logical thing to try since I hadn’t had luck finding a “real” bath mat that I liked, what with these being out of my price range:

Would you want one if I told you that “This bathing room carpet is produced of imputrescible foam named plastazote”?

We still needed a rug pad, though, which I found by the yard at Joann Fabrics. It is regularly $7.99/yard (54” wide) but my friend Joann has this habit of sending out 50% off coupons approximately every other minute, making it just about $4 a yard. That means for a 3’x5’ rug, your rug pad will cost a mere $4 since you will only need one yard. The same size costs $13 at Target, $12 at West Elm, $16 at Walmart, $14 at Overstock, and $13 at Amazon. (All of those were online prices. The store might be different. But if you’re going to go to the store, you might as well go to Joann’s.) We needed 2’x4’, which meant 2/3 yard of rug padding. Once home, I just trimmed off the excess to make the exact size that we needed…

…and tada, a rug that stays in place. Even if a certain chubby cat isn’t laying on it possessively.

This is in sharp contrast with a rug that skids and scrunches because said chubby cat and her soon-to-be chubby sister insist on diving into it like it’s a big pile of meat.

Total cost for the rug pad: $2.66.

With the money you and I will save, we could practically buy a moss mat and share it. You know, like an every other weekend and take turns at Thanksgiving sort of thing. Or, you could fly to my house and help me renovate our bathroom so that Jordan, Trey, and Grace are no longer rub-a-dub dubbing in our tub and our window can be covered with something better than a partially used sheet of white fabric.

Or, there’s that cat t-shirt thing. Just sayin’.

Did you know Joann Fabrics sold by-the-yard rug padding? What would you do with $10 saved? Who believes me when I say that I would wear that t-shirt proudly?