AIBU to regret leaving a doormat behind when moving house?

[Flowersforyourchocolateprettyplease]

Inspired by another thread about leaving light shades when moving house.

I left an outdoor mat when I moved. Figured, it's just a mat and would be lovely for the new tenants to have one less thing to worry about.

What I didn't appreciate was how impossible it would prove to replace said mat. It's since been discontinued and no one else is silly enough to get rid, so nothing on the resale sites.

I've since purchased many disappointing ones and have almost given up.

What's your one seemingly non-important thing you left behind and lived to regret?

YABU - It's just a mat, it wasn't .
YANBU - Regret some things.

I know! We’d also put expensive wallpaper up, which we did expect her to redecorate and make her own mark, but she replaced it with woodchip and painted it orange. It was like she was so desperate to make it hers, but she didn’t have the money to decorate, so just replaced it all with worse, cheaper items.

Wow, bet she regretted it too, even if she wouldn't say to you.

Re sturdy door mats, in the stores like Mole, the outdoory type places, there are usually some tough looking door mats, might be better that the 'domestic' stores like IKEA and so on.

When we moved many years ago, just before Easter, we realised that we'd left the children's Easter eggs in the back of a high cupboard where they were hidden away 'for safety'!

The new owners will have chucked it out. That’s the first thing I would replace when I moved in, no one wants to keep a mat full of other people’s dirt.

When we first moved in to our house the previous owner returned a week later. He knocked at 7.30 in the evening and asked for his favourite bucket back. I think it was just an excuse to have a bit of a nose!

I moved in January of this year. I had one large Kallax unit and four smaller ones. After the move one of the smaller ones had mysteriously disappeared. All of the units were downstairs. The guys who moved me were a mixed bunch including my own son and they all swore the lorry was empty when they had finished. Later the same night I had to pick up a few bits that had been accidentally left in the kitchen cupboards and there was no sign of the unit in the old house. In the end I bought a new one but I am still mystified.

Have you been to a garden centre? Our local one always has lovely ones which sound like the one you’ve described.

I'm having a dilemma re stuff to leave/take. There's a fab curtain rail, I don't want to leave it. We will have to put in basic ceiling roses as we have 2 amazing light fittings. I just bought 2 matching shades for hallway/landing for the sales' pics, thinking I'd leave them but now I quite like them. Do I take all of my heavy ceramic plant pots? I've emptied them as there's little point in growing veg this year, but they are so heavy!

this might be a good replacement for you from Garden Trading
https://www.gardentrading.co.uk/products/slatted-doormat.htmlDoormat

Go and take it back, it is still your property and it is outside, not like you're letting yourself in and taking a rug or ilk, if as you say you have a tenant in there, unless of course you put it on an inventory.

Thank you, my question continues, so shall have a look.

Oops, lovely find for the new tenants 🥚.

That's what I thought, but it wouldn't be dirty to look at as it was such a great mat, almost self cleaning.

Haha, I love that. Should have just gone round, especially as I hadn't moved far.

Strange, someone got a freebie.

I've been to a few in search but alas, no luck.

Based on this thread, take, take, take!! Better to change your mind and give it to charity later than be ever searching for the right replacement like some of us 😅.

Just reminded me of when DM held on to a huge planter for us when we moved into a flat. When she moved, she left it behind and it's yet another thing I think about.

Yes, I have attachment issues 😅.

Thank you, I can forsee rust and wood splitting.
Sorry, I clearly can't let go yet.

Might do a few drive-bys first and scope the place 👀 .

Take the curtain rail! When we bought our first house in 1980, there was a very thick wooden pole right across the front wall of the living room. I made floor to ceiling curtains which covered the whole wall. When we moved, we took the pole and it fitted exactly across the bay window in the new living room. For the next move, I forgot to take it and finding a similar replacement was impossible. 45 years on, I still remember it fondly.

Im ridiculously invested in this fabled door mat.

No grooves unfortunately but it does look quite scrapy

https://amzn.eu/d/07hvsXn2

Or maybe this one? More expensive but seems pretty sturdy i guess?

https://amzn.eu/d/0bHL8SCc

I hate it when companies get rid of our favourite functional or delicious items. Im thinking about Cadburys Fuse - i dont eat door mats...😄

I'd definitely take your fab curtain rail, if I were you @Cherrysoup! We've bought and sold lots of times and have some amazing thick, vintage curtain poles with lovely finials that we always tell our buyers aren't staying, although we do replace them obviously 😉

We last moved at the end of 2024, a long distance move back 'home' to England from Wales where we'd created a wonderful 0.5 acre garden from scratch. As well as loads of beautiful plants in the ground which we obviously couldn't take with us, we had several enormous (mostly stone/reconstituted stone/salt-glazed) planters which we informed our buyers were coming with us on completion day.

A pair of these were 1m high Errington Reay pots we'd picked up for a steal on eBay a few years previously. I loved them and was determined to keep them for our new (much smaller, courtyard) garden, where I imagined them being a real feature. We had work colleagues of DH help us move in two massive hired vans and from the outset I made it abundantly clear not to leave the pots behind. I was therefore incredibly upset when they announced they couldn't fit them in - annoyingly they were too huge for the car too, so had to be left behind. Our buyers weren't moving in for a week but as it was 200+ miles away we couldn't easily pop back for them and DH refused to hire another van. I still haven't got over it (only half joking!) and haven't managed to find suitable replacements yet.

Go and get your mat back.

I may well, the huge 3ft high one that my bil filled with soil and bulbs and left for us at my mil’s 3 hours away took a bit of wrangling into the car! 🤣 I’ll no doubt miss all the plastic and ceramic troughs if I don’t take them.

Definitely taking it, it’s quite ornate/heavy. Do I have to leave something in its place?

Re the pole not being big enough, I can’t remember where I saw 2 poles joined with a screw in the middle, possibly a rented place before we bought.