Doormat

A doormat is a flat rectangle of bristles placed outside a door so that visitors may wipe their feet on it. It is the only object in the house whose job is to be stood on and to say thank you.^[1]

Many doormats bear the word “Welcome”, which they say to everyone who steps on them, including the person who delivers the bills.

The wiping procedure

Under the Domestic Threshold Accord of 1962, a correct wipe consists of three strokes per foot, forward, back and forward again, followed by a fourth stroke for luck. A working group spent nine years testing whether a fifth stroke made feet cleaner. It made the doormat dirtier, which was recorded as a success for the feet.^[2]

Where dirt goes

Dirt wiped onto a doormat does not disappear. Studies of a single mat over thirty years found that it contained the entire front garden, twice, and a key that nobody could identify.

Under the doormat

The space under a doormat is the most searched hiding place in the world, and therefore the least hidden. Burglars check it first; so does everyone else who lives there and has forgotten their key.^[3]

See also

• Door – what the doormat is outside of
• Left side – the side of the mat nobody wipes on
• Hedgehog – a doormat that walks away

References

1. Coir, K. (1971). Under Foot. Bristle Books. p. 3.
2. Domestic Threshold Accord (1962). Article 4: “Wiping”.
3. Keyes, S. (2017). “Where Is It? A Survey of Mats”. Found under a mat.