It’s great fun trouncing around in the backyard.

Watering the flowers and trees, attending to the waterfall, swimming in the pool. Just organizing my stuff outside is fun.

It was fun until it was time to re-enter the house.  Then the thought “Just how much mud, dirt, or yucky stuff will I track in today?”  This was immediately followed by the thought, “How will my tracks be greeted by my lovely wife?”

I thought I had done a good job of wiping my shoes and bare feet on our outside door mats.  Upon entering our bathroom or sliding door, I thought I had sopped up, wiped up, and otherwise covered my tracks. Nope.  The good wife is also a good detective.  You get the picture.

When I spied a boxed door mat while shopping last week, I just had to stop and read the box’s bold print: Clean Step Mat.

The box went on to say that if I stepped on the mat it would remove any and all dirt.

I placed the new mat outside of the bathroom door.

Each time I came in from the pool I stepped on the new mat. Then I stepped on the bathroom mat.  Where were the little leaves and the specks of dirt that always dotted the bathroom mat?

This was too good to be true.

It was true.  Here was a “clean step mat.”

Off I hurried to buy a second mat for the sliding door entrance.

Now, I actually have as much fun entering my house as I have being outside in the yard.