Two part question on interior decorating:

I need some ideas to ensure our white berber carpeting in the basement is not dirtied faster than we want them to be. There's a sliding door that opens up to the back yard. We don't plan to change the carpeting yet-we just moved in recently. What to do to keep the carpet clean? This is part of our tv room area. The diagonal path leads from the sliding door to the stairs is about about 11 feet. Does covering with plastic mat do? does that look tacky?

The entire basement is rectangular in shape, about 11 ft x 30 feet. It's big enough to be divided into two small rooms. Standing from the sliding door, one can visually split the room into two with the left being a fireplace and the right wall is a door that leads to a room. Across from the sliding doors are the stairs that leads upward. How would the arrangements of this space give us some space. We don't want to divide the room up. But, we want to use the fireplace but don't want to clutter that area. The tv area would be on the right side, which looks more like a cove area. We don't even know where to put a sofa or the tiny tv we have. We tend to put our sofa against the walls so there are plenty of space inbetween. If the sofa is on one side, it looks like the fireplace side is very bare.

Thoughts?