Why our house will never get decorated.

We had a green mat in out back hallway. It was about the width of our hallway by about a meter long. It was not spectacular, but it did add some colour to our very neutral back hallway, and it allowed several people to step inside and take off their shoes at the same time. Unfortunately, due to many washings, the rubberized stuff on the back was coming off, and it had a tendency to shift and bulge. I guess this was really bothering Dave.

The other day I woke up to find this in my hallway instead of my normal carpet. During the previous day, Dave had went out and bought this carpet and thown the old carpet out. Now, I must say there are several positives to this carpet: it sticks to the floor, it is colourful, and it has a nice scrachy surface for scraping off your shoes. It does however lack one thing: size. It is a bit narrow for our entry way. People entering our house have to line up to take their shoes off without getting the linoleum wet or dirty, and frankly I think it looks ridiculous. Dave doesn't see what my issue with the carpet is since he usually enters the house by himself, and it does stick to the floor well, so he is not irritated with it at all.

Suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, Andrew developed a laundry room phobia. He refused to enter the laundry room. Instead, when I did laundry he would stand in the hallway and call, "Mommy, please come back to me". It took me about a week to figure out that he didn't like the feeling of the carpet on his feet and so refused to walk over it. I explained to him that he could go around the carpet, and that I wasn't going to lift him into the laundry room. So he began to meticulously lean down, flip the carpet in half and crawl over the soft rubberized underside of the carpet.

Last week, I moved the carpet like this. It is now even less practical, but it doesn't look quite as silly, and my son can once more enter the laundry room in peace.