Posted on 07/31/2022 7:11:02 AM PDT by aquila48
It’s a thorny issue that can cause heated debate but, like so many things in Britain, social standing made it even more complicated.
To be fair, the debate was sparked by my uncle. “I am perplexed,” he emailed me a couple of months ago, “by tradesmen who are determined to take their perfectly clean boots off before entering a lived-in, dog-strewn house like ours. And yesterday, a friend who lives in an even scruffier and doggier house apologised for having his clean, dry gumboots on when he called, having been making a bonfire at home. Keep them on I say, and have a run around with the Dyson afterwards.”
I decided to mention this “shoes on or shoes off” question in my Sunday Telegraph column. Have we become more of a shoes-off nation since the pandemic, I wondered, because we’re now so wimpy about germs?
A lively, six-week correspondence kicked off on the letters page. Some pointed out that removing shoes was a matter of respect, not just hygiene. One lady said that the shoes-off-at-the-door rule meant she knew which of her children were in the house when she returned from work.
Another insisted that, since socks and stockings are sold in the hosiery department, asking guests to remove their shoes and reveal them was “on a par with expecting them to remove their shirts and blouses and sit around in their underwear”. (Hard to fault the logic.) Jennie from Cheltenham wrote that she’d once lived in Borneo where removing shoes is the custom, but this caused havoc at a dinner party after her puppy scattered 30 pairs of shoes in the garden.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Off, right before the Misses washes my feet.
Off. It’s an old courtesy, from when working class people entered homes and didn’t want to trek in the mud, dirt, and crap from the nasty streets and fields.
Depends on the house. If the house is a pit then shoes stay on, if the house is immaculate then shoes come off.
Wife is Taiwanese. We do not wear shoes in the house.
If you have carpet, off. Hardwood floors okay.
How about the mamasan slipper's?
Foot odor is worse when the shoes come off. Just sayin’.
“Shoes on or shoes off?”
They way I see it if dogs don’t have to take off their shoes at the door, why should humans have to?
Shoes off. You forget they need it oil my feet before entering the house.
My husband takes his off/changes to slippers. I was raised to keep my shoes on in the house because the place got so stinking cold. Also, I did, and still, run outside all the time.I was raised on a farm, he was a city boy.
At my brother’s house we have to take our shoes off/change them. My sister in law keeps a very clean house.
What about those from say, Japan. Is that a middle class thing?
My dogs are all thieves. Anything left on the floor is fair game to them, and they have a doggie door for access to the outside, nothing is safe.
Shoes off as we come in the door does make the housework easier, and all the floors do stay cleaner than if the shoes worn outdoors are left on inside.
Some think this is an “Asian” thing, but even the Puerto Rican family next door does it religiously - you can see the line of shoes just outside the side entrance they all enter the house from (it’s under a carport).
Or, we could live in The Shire, and they’d never be on.
Since I am not a mouse, I wear shoes.
Gumboots
Where is the walrus?
It is? I take my shoes off because:
A) its more comfortable that way
B) I don’t want to track so much dirt all over the place. I noticed the floors don’t get dirty nearly as fast when I take off my shoes after getting home.
I do not request that people (especially friends and family but strangers too) remove their shoes before entering my home as I value their comfort and freedom to choose more than I value my carpet.
If my shoes are muddy I take them off, otherwise not. I don’t remember ever visiting anyone who expected guests to remove their shoes.
How come I track dirt into the house, but don’t track any out?
That’s the problem that got Frank Costanza in trouble in Korea.
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