This is another boring but kinda useful post. And it may not apply to you at all if you live in a city and you don’t get muddy.

But, if you have children or dogs and/or live in the country, you may find this of help.

Last autumn when it was really wet and therefore muddy, our wooden floors got unfeasibly dirty. The entrance hall comprised of dirt, wet foot prints, mud, bits of grass. No doormat could deal with the amount of detritus that was coming in.

When I was out and about in London one wet day, I noticed some rather fine establishments would put out these particular mats inside their doors, when it rained. I looked into it and they were by UK Mats.

Now, UK Mats has great customer service. I know, I used it a lot last year as I tried to work out what to get; the great thing is that it makes mats to order so in almost any size you want.

But in the end, I didn’t get my mat from there because I realised that I really needed a mat that could be machine washed. After some research one name kept coming up: Turtle Mats. These are not cheap (neither are UK Mats) and there are lots of ones out there that look the same but aren’t. People who have a Turtle Mat do rather go on about how good they are. Which both annoyed and heartened me. Annoyed because I really didn’t want to be spending nearly £90 on a doormat. Heartened because it seemed that if you did, it was worth it.

We went for the largest size (hence the price, you can get them from £23) and ours is from the Classic collection. There are lots of others in the range and I’m sure they work brilliantly, but I don’t do patterned doormats.

Anyway. We’ve had ours for a year now and it is, indeed, brilliant. It seems to suck water and mud from your feet, it doesn’t slip and when it gets too dirty you can put it in the washing machine.

I was so impressed I didn’t buy the company, but I did buy a Mud Hog to go outside, too.

(I’ve tried, but can I take a decent photo of this? Course not.)