Anti Fatigue Mats

I absolutely love tiled floors, and my second choice is wood flooring - the best of both worlds it what I have, wood - actually even better, bamboo flooring in the living areas and tiles on the kitchen, bathroom and entrance floors. The tiles are porcelain, but nonetheless they are hard on elderly feet and legs if you (me) are standing for long periods, which I do because I so love to cook. And, love less, cleaning up after a meal, but oh! I am so anal about keeping my kitchen clean.

Enter the anti fatigue kitchen mat. A cushioned mat placed strategically where the most standing is done, by the sink, the stove, the fridge and, in our case, in the garage by the second fridge and the workbenches.



When we first moved into our newly remodeled home we bought, what we considered to be expensive, anti fatigue mats from Home Depot. They were study, and while not aesthetically pleasing they were functional.



My husband is actually much more anal than I am and very quickly he was unhappy with the way that the mats were wearing, the problem was that the color was wearing off. He wanted to paint them, but luckily he is anal enough that he wouldn't use just any paint and could not find the paint he would trust - the paint I would trust doesn't exist, I am sure of that.

We were in Costco one day and saw anti fatigue mats for an incredibly low price, can you say 'you get what you pay for'? we bought two knowing we were taking a $13 dollar chance - we have gambled with more than that and lost, and we pretty much lost our $13 dollars.




They worked for a few weeks, but very quickly the corners started to curl up and they became more of a danger than a comfort. We moved them to the garage, where upside down they worked beautifully in front of the refrigerator there.



So the search was on for something to replace them. We found some mats on our favorite Amazon, they looked perfect, a nice wedge shaped edge that wouldn't curl, the cost no longer looked expensive at $35 each, in fact that looked pretty good.

What color? the choices were relatively varied: slate, tan, espresso, black.. of course, they had to be fancy names but we were smart enough to be able to translate them into real colors and decided on the tan as (in my opinion) that would blend well with our decor, for my husband the criteria was that would not be offensive.

When they arrived I was somewhat disturbed to discover they had a snake pattern finish. I am averse to killing animals for their skin but of course this was plastic so I decided to give it a try, and definitely it was comfortable to stand on and it did blend in with the decor.





We now have to wait to see if these work in the longer term before we get two more and dispose of the second choice that Larry will paint if we don't.