My wife regularly reminds me to step over the threshold when passing from the kitchen to the living room.
I just as regularly forget.

Her reasoning is that she wants to avoid wearing out the rug at that spot. It does seem to be true that it is wearing faster there and is darker than the rest of the rug, indicating ingrained dirt that resists vacuuming. Certainly from that evidence, her theory of rug wear due to improper stepping habits seems to be more than reasonable.

However, I have formulated a competing theory. While I have not formally presented this to my wife as of yet, I think it hints at my so called “careless” stepping actually being the best for the carpet. I will expound it here and solicit comments before submitting it to my wife.

Here is my theory: if I am not to step upon the rug near to the threshold, I plainly have no choice but to make a longer stride that will carry my foot farther into the room. As I am presently incapable of levitation, that seems to be inarguable.

If I adopted that as habit, which would not be easy, considering how easily distracted and fuddle-brained I am, two facts seem inescapable:

1. The dirty area would simply extend farther into the room for no net difference.
2. As the accentuated stride would result in my foot making contact with more force than usual, more carpet wear would occur and more dirt would be ground into the fibers.

As a minor aside, unimportant to anyone but my own self, the lengthened stride might also be more conducive to injury. I realize that my straining a ligament is basically unimportant when put beside a dirty looking patch of carpet, but I selfishly mention that in hopes of a few pity votes.

I do think the first two consequences stand on their own anyway.