to think people should keep their shoes on in public rooms?

It is standard practice in New Zealand too to remove shoes before entering someone's home and also many other places. We remove our shoes before entering our classroom for our Maori lesson for example. As I get "claustrophobia of the toes", this suits me literally down to the ground.

dunit and I went to an inn for refreshments after a hot moorland walk the other day. I took my boots and socks off so my feet could cool down. I often do this on trains too, well, anywhere where my feet feel too hot.

My feet stay on the floor. Floors do not need to be 'hygienic'. Neither do feet. They are washable anyway.

Didn't you let your kids crawl around in muck outside, janer?

It would not surprise me if a very large proportion of the world's human population has bare feet all the time. And I know for a fact that an even larger proportion (i.e. most) of the world's human population have always, until very recently, gone barefoot. We survived.

Is worry/distaste-for-the-ordinary-and-basic like that in the OP one of those "twenty-first century, first world problems"?

It's our practice to remove our shoes at home. It was always interesting to see the row of shoes, large and small, in the hall, when DSs had friends staying over!

x

I am with the 'remove shoes in the hall' sentiment as it is the shoes (not the bare or stockinged feet) that may have trodden in unmentionables en route to the house. As I have hard floors throughout my house nothing will stick to those feet once inside the house.

absent, you've reminded me that I have sometimes seen women in New Zealand walking barefoot in the street. These weren't women who appeared to be poor or deprived in any way - perhaps a bit hippy.

I always change into other footwear when I get home unless already wearing flipflops - I have several levels of flip flops - cheap ish sports shop ones for everyday at home and better Havianas for outings! Plus some with sort of wedgie heels such a Wavewalk or Fitflops - I cannot wear shoes without socks or stocking sort of things in the summer as my toes get rubbed raw- hence the flipflops. I do have a nice comfy pair of Marks sandals but the straps give me itchy feet when really hot although I do put up with that if driving. I often have bare feet indoors and on the patio - and there is nothing like a nice cool soak or spray with the hose bit of the shower! In the winter I tend to wear flat boots and always socks so am fine if I take them off in any house -and at home I wear fleecy lined boot slippers.
When we have guests for dinner etc I do change into my best flip flops!!!

My kitchen is full of shoes that I've kicked off at the back door - or it was until last night when I tidied them up for a change. I usually change into my slippers or crocs.

We always take our shoes off in the house, and in anyone's house we are visiting, even when they protest we need not. I don't insist on it in my house, but most people we know are courteous enough to do it. When we are walking, we carry boot covers for if we call in at a pub - it's such a pain to take off walking boots and then have to put them back on again. I don't like sitting in a pub in my socks, eating lunch! Sometimes, however, it's the only way you are going to get any lunch!

Back a bit people would only have one pair of shoes and only slippers/house shoes if they were lucky. Even if they had wanted to walk around at home bare foot or in socks, houses, and especially floors, were not warm enough. We have turned into a bunch of fusspots with our no shoes in the house rules and can only do it because our houses are well heated and the floors insulated with carpets quite often.

Fussing minding whether people wear shoes or not indoors is a problem caused by relative luxury/high living standards.

I taught my kids to take their shoes off when they came in but that was because I thought it was better for their growing feet to be bare.

My mother was told by her mother to put her shoes on as soon as she got out of bed. Their bedrooms had cold lino floors and no central heating which grandma thought would not be good for her children's feet.

thatbags yes, my kids (and I) always crawled around in muck outside, but I always had big lobbies and hallways to get them into cleaner clothes.

I keep a supply of soft washable slippers always to hand in case visitors want them, purely because some friends do automatically ask what to do the first time they come round - as do I. I always ask, shoes on or off? It's the done thing in Scandinavia to take your shoes off, so people there are used to carting slippers or making sure they don't have holey socks.

But it wasn't the house aspect of it that worried me, it was the thought of the toddler group crawling around on the floor the following day and being subjected to smelly sweaty carpet. Dust and dirt from shoes would be vacuumed up each morning by the cleaner, but something like 20 people took their shoes off last night. It's not something I have come across before on a public carpeted space.

In farming and mining communities, going back in time, it was always the custom to take off muddy/dirty boots and leave them outside or in the porch. The housewives of yesteryear would not have tolerated extra work cleaning floors with the limited resources they had at their disposal.

In Muslim household and the mosque you would be expected to remove your shoes too.

I don't think a bit of sweat in the carpet would bother children. Again, going back a bit to when washing facilities were minimal, people lived and survived with a much greater exposure to their own and other people's sweat than we do.

It just seems a non-problem to me, janer, though I understand it bothers you and sympathise accordingly.

I'm taking a different view of this! It depends on the feet and the owner! The idea of sitting in a public room with lots of bare, not necessarily fragrant, feet is a bit nauseating

All my DCS insist on the shoes off rule in their homes. But oddly enough don't think to apply it in mine.

You have to in Thailand. Sit in public rooms with lots of bare feet, I mean. Public rooms such as dental clinic waiting rooms, hospital dittos, etc. People put their shoes flip flops in the queue and then go and sit down to wait their turn. Lateral thinking. Like it

I have heard tales of people not always returning to the same pair of flip flops they left!

Love that idea Bags

I really hope that you would keep them on if the home owner protests Greyduster - if I protest it is because I really mean it! I don't want you wandering around without your shoes.

as I said above - I don't have a problem with no outside shoes in my house as I have hard floors - but this is not some overzealous fussiness or abhorrance of dirt
people walk through all kinds of things on their way to my doorstep - dog muck being just one - do I want those spread all over my carpet/ floor
so shoes off in the hall and my floors are kept clean so that walking in bare/stockinged feet is a pleasure.

If the floors are also warm I have no problem with any of that. Actually, I have no problem with it anyway, but I do have cold feet even in carpeted houses. #have-to-carry-slippers-with-me

Mind you, I keep forgetting, most of you live in much warmer climes than I do. That probably explains it.

BTW, most people, and certainly the ones who live here, take their shoess off in my house too. I do. But I put something else on my feet to keep them warm.

If someone says "oh there's really no need to take off your shoes", I usually do it anyway. I don't wear shoes in my house, even though we have wood floors. Why should I do it in anyone else's? I consider it a courtesy. When we visit my oldest friend, she always says it. She has pale oatmeal carpets, and I am sure she wants them to stay that colour. I would.

I think it very rude to override the home owner. If they ask you to take them off I do, but I expect the same courtesy back and them to keep them on if asked - not for it to be assumed that really I want them off! I don't.

This taking your shoes off indoors really didn't happen when I was young (unless muddy wellies). It seems to have come in with the increase in fitted carpets a few decades ago. Lino, wood floors and rugs were what people we knew had. The possibility of people taking shoes off on arrival simply never arose.
I like to put my slippers on when I get home but that's for comforts sake. I also have a hoover and clean the carpets!

Leticia, if I am ever fortunate enough to be invited into your home, I will definitely not take off my shoes!