I remember my primary school having large coconut mats at entrances to wipe our feet on. I also remember my mums' expression 'legs like coconut mats' implying that she badly needed to remove her superfluous leg hair. She never shaved them or used delapitory (excuse spelling?) creams. Instead she used a fine sandpaper mitt type of thing to rub them away.
We had to do Gym on the coconut matting - very rough on bare arms and legs. Sook that is what my Mum used too - they were battleship grey, rubbed legs briskly and then nivea cream to follow - seemed to work quite well.
I remember when we moved into a new semi-detached house in about 1954 and we had some 'fitted' carpets for the first time, as opposed to rugs and lino etc.!
I remember the arrival of Cyril Lord fitted carpets in the 50s. My mother thought she had died and gone to heaven when she had no more wooden floors to clean. Now we like our wooden floors, funny isn't it....
Carpets? - we did not have those in our house as children. Our home was black marley tiles (remember those, with the little flecks in?) downstairs and lino upstairs. My Dad, trying to save money, used lino offcuts upstairs and cut them into squares which he tacked down in a "tile" pattern. The corners turned up over time and it was very uncomfortable to walk on, especially in bare feet at night when heading for the loo!
We had a coconut matting rug in front of the kitchen sink. Could never understand why because bits of food got caught in the holey pattern and when it was moved to wash the kitchen floor, the dog's hairs had collected underneath. It was also impossible to get clean if you spilt flour on it during a baking session.
Younger people tend to prefer floor boards to carpets but I'm sure carpetting makes a house warmer. People are urged to take all sorts of measures to combat heat loss and I wondered if there is any evidence to suggest that fitted carpets save on heating.