car camping with kids….tent entrance dirt mat?

A “no shoes in the tent” rule and lowered standards.

Don’t have kids. But I think I’d use both. The poly tarp isn’t really going to ‘scrape’ dirt and such off shoes, the entrance mat will. But the entrance mat won’t do well sitting on wet mud and such, the poly tarp will. So I’d put down the poly tarp first (or tyvek if you have that, or even polycryo for something nice and light), and the entrance mat on top of that. Or just glue some polycryo or tyvek to the bottom of an entrance mat, that would work too.

And perhaps bring along a small broom/dustpan combo if you don’t already.

We used a longer tarp for the tent that extended out as an entranced mat.  All shoes went off before entering the tent.  It’s helps to have a tarp out in front as a clean spot to put on/take off shoes.

I have a tyvek sheet for the vestibule area and put a camping chair in there.

We use a cut down roll of astroturf.

We use a rag mat.  People take their shoes off on the mat and leave them outside the tent, then step into the tent from the mat.

I quite literally grabbed one of our doormats and brought it with us on our last trip out with our camper, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t do the same with a car camping tent.  I’ve never used a poly tarp but they make these large plastic faux rugs folks use when RVing that seem like they would work better than a tarp, but I personally would still want to have a proper mat to clean the shoes off on.

We use a roll-up grass straw mat outside our tent; it can be shaken out periodically.  They are lightweight and cost about $3.

Make them sleep in the vestibule with the dog – builds character plus the dog won’t whine to get in.

You want a woven mat that allows fine sand and dirt to pass through, and more importantly, allows rain water to quickly drain.

For the past 30+ years I have been using Patty O’Mats by A&E for my campers. They last a long time and fold fairly compactly. We have only replaced ours when we have bought a larger camper, thus buying a longer mat each time. They might be a little big for tent camping. The mats are 7′ wide and come in 8, 12, and 16 foot lengths. There are grommets at each corner and using nail stakes with a large washer can be made quite taut, which makes it easy to sweep off any dirt.

We also have a small sand mat approximately 6′ x 3′ by CGEAR for our dog, Corky. Corky is a white sand & dirt magnet who likes to lie under the camper during the day.

The CGEAR mat is constructed of two pieces of woven material, the top has a looser weave allowing sand to pass through. It has no grommets, but you could add them. Having two layers it doesn’t lie as taunt as the Patty O’Mat. Here’s a link to the CGEAR mat on Amazon.

We do a fair amount of car camping with kids and my goto for this purpose is a 6-foot piece of indoor/outdoor carpeting (I think it’s 10′ wide) from Home Depot.  It folds up fairly well and I put much of it under the tent (on top of my ground cloth) as some extra padding in the portion of the tent where people are walking or kneeling.

Note – I have an LLBean King Pine Dome tent with a large screened vestibule so the carpet outside the tent is somewhat protected from the elements.

After the kids wore them out on the rec room floor, these snap-together foam pads were re-purposed for the tent footprint. I cut a few of them to fit the profile of the vestibules as well. While they are bulky, they are light and well worth it, especially while dealing with kids & dogs pattering around in a tent.

funny and very helpful answers, thank you!