I would hate to go back to days before our family acquired a vacuum cleaner, and we had to take rugs out and hang them over an extra sturdy line and beat them to get rid of embedded fine sand. Cleaning a room in those days was so difficult front rooms were typically closed to family, and open only to distinguished visitors, and weddings and funerals. On PEI the red clay is so bad everybody takes shoes off before entering a home. When I told my secretary I had been into front room of a home on PEI, she gasped, and said: "I've known her for twenty years, and have never been invited into her front room!"
Let us rejoice that the battledore makers are long gone.