I'm with you on carpet, vs. the cold floors, Lyn. I have arthritis in my feet and can't walk around even in my socks on our tile floors, either winter or summer (when they are "nice and cool" from the a/c). We have nice warm cushy carpet in our bedroom and other areas where we walk in our bare feet.
That being said, I love my sisal area rugs for collecting and hiding all the dirt I track in from the garden. It brushes off my shoes and falls through the rugs onto the tile. Then I can just vacuum it up at my leisure.
Sisal, and seagrass rugs make good weed barriers, covered with mulch, and then of course they obligingly disappear in a year or three in our hot, humid garden.
After it grew a lovely crop of black algae on our patio, we relegated an "outdoor" rug over to the Sailing Squadron where we store our little sailboat. We spread it out and park the boat on it so we don't have to mow and weed, and it has only lasted about 3 years, with now weeds coming up through it quite easily. Probably would have lasted better if we'd spread mulch on top of it.
