

I remember reading something a while ago that said the rubber backed mats should never go in the dryer, and while I forget the exact reason, it wasn’t just because the dryer damages the mat. Searching online, it looks like the rubber can also damage the dryer and poses an increased fire risk.
Your best bet is to find activities that you enjoy that you can do on a regular basis in an environment where you’ll be around other people who also participate regularly. Sign up for a class, join a sports team, volunteer somewhere, find a local meetup group, or even just become a regular at a bar.
Making new friends definitely gets harder as we get older because people are busy and just don’t have the same opportunities to casually yet regularly interact with strangers any more. As kids, most people repeatedly engaged with the same group of people on a daily or weekly basis due to school, sports, etc., and the familiarity that came with that made it relatively effortless to develop some friendships.
Even when I totally hit it off with people I’ve just met and we exchange contact details, I’ve rarely ever intentionally hung out with them again. The new friendships that I’ve formed as an adult were either with a friend of a friend or with people I happened to cross paths with many times before we ever intentionally made plans together. It’s those repeated, low stakes interactions that have been most successful at forming new friendships.