Jute rugs are weird. It’s basically like having dirty ropes as a floor cover… and I’m not the first/only/last person to ever buy one. AND I’m pretty sure I broke every rule in the “how to care for a jute rug” manual. But I didn’t didn’t have a manual, only a tag that said “spot clean only” and I’m a rebel like that.
Our Husky puppy ATE our rug this summer, so it was a perfect opportunity to justify buying a new one. And this time, I knew exactly what I wanted.
Ivory Jute.
Remember the puppy I mentioned about 2 seconds ago. Yeah, he pee’d all over it the first day I bought it. Neat. So I spot cleaned it, just as directed, but it never looked clean. The picture above shows off it’s tightly woven (dirty) glory.
Enter washing machine.
My suggestions:
- Use an industrial machine
- You want the rug to fit without having to be folded
- Don’t dry it
- Find a place to hang it to dry, like a fence maybe. We used some exercise equipment in my husband’s weight room. It held tons of water, so you will probably want to let it dry outside.
- Poke any lose pieces back down to the bottom
- I used the end of some scissors (and also had to cut off some super scraggly pieces)
This is the AFTER:
Admittedly, it looks more like a shag rug these days – but HEY its CLEAN!
Overall Conclusion:
If you are a perfectionist, I wouldn’t recommend using the washing machine. If you don’t mind a little bit of “character”, I say go for it!
House on Brisco 