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

I haven't spent all day working it out - Anya!!

I expect you had better thinGS to do. So should we all.

The house where I have to take them off has a stone hallway. I spend the entire time trying to surreptitiously rub some feeling into my frozen feet!

I was replying - you said 'I'm surprised you take your shoes off when you go to bed' and I said 'I keep them on for comfort'. We were talking about shoes.

In bed...?

Now I'm totally you were talking about your feet in that post Leticia no mention of shoes

It's not just me is it Ana?

I'm still trying to figure out if Letticia takes her feet off in bed or keeps her shoes on in bed. I think she has to take her feet off in a house where there's a tiled hallway.

Perhaps we need to define 'them'

I was talking about shoes- being under the impression the thread was about shoes.
If you want to be pedantic you could link my 2 sentences together.

.

Leticia I know you were, I was only winding you up and didn't expect you to take me seriously, hence the emoticons.

Peace x

There are nights when I get 'jumpy legs' and would quite like to take my feet off!

I wouldn't expect anyone to remove their shoes when visiting. The doormat's there for wiping feet on! I once went to a party in a house where there was a row of slippers which the guests were expected to change into as they came into the hallway. Didn't seem quite right, everyone smartly dressed but trudging around in slippers, men included!
If it was snowy or shoes were muddy, I would think visitors would take their shoes off anyway, but otherwise I wouldn't expect it. How does it work if you have the gasman in....?

Leticia I know the feeling

I have noticed that many tradesmen these days change, or take off, their shoes without being asked these days - especially if they are working upstairs.

I did notice that the chap who installed my broadband wore plastic covers over his shoes.

All of which suggests that in fact, people who take their shoes off in public rooms are doing the rest of us a service in minimising the spread of beastly bacteria [tongue-firmly-in-cheek-emoticon].

In short, as I suggested earlier, people taking shoes off anywhere at all really isn't a problem.

Oh heck! They'll be transferring beastly bacteria ti inside their shoes as well. End of civilisation as we know it.

Like phone hygienists in the Hitchhikers Guide?

For those who haven't read it Mr. Adams told the story of the The Golgafrinchans, a race of people who sent their Telephone Sanitizer population away. The Sanitizers were sent along with another third of the planet’s population who were also deemed useless to form a colony on a remote planet (Earth as it happens). Of course, the remaining Golgafrinchan population was then wiped out by a virulent disease contracted via unsanitary telephones.

And, going back to my story of having to put slippers on at that party - I didn't feel all that chuffed putting my feet into slippers that goodness knows how many people had already had their feet in ! Anyway, when I think of it, my carpets are really quite old ones, as we've had them since we moved here 25 years ago - though are cleaned now and again . I think my house may be what my old mum would have described as 'homely'!

Ah Douglas Adams. What a loss. I just loved his way of looking at things.

We had some furniture from M&S recently and the delivery men put plastic covers on over their shoes before coming into the house. I had never seen that before although I don't buy new furniture often.

I think it started when people began to have much lighter carpets in their homes. My old carpet was quite a dark green and, as such, didn't show any marks. I changed it recently, even though I think it would have lasted forever, because the colour was draining all of the light from the room and even though I couldn't see any dirt I knew it was there and couldn't face moving the furniture to have the cleaners in again.

Marks and Sparks didn't do that for us! Luckily I had covered up the new carpet, although they always manage to stray off the dust sheets.

I can trace the start of my OCD-ness back to the day, years ago, when I read a short piece in Woman mag about how many germs there are on a (then) two shilling coin. Never been the same since. I never gave germs a thought before that. Perhaps we just know too much these days.