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 ...
I would never ask a guest to remove shoes. My husband and I switch shoes when coming inside. He is much better at changing then he was. I find it helps keep floors cleaner. We each like support when walking and have a pair of shoes for mostly indoor wear.
“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.”
And plastic covers on the furniture.
No lie!
I keep mine on.
My brother & his wife take them off at the door.
And, today it is an affectation of the social climbers and noses-in-the-air bunch. Rich folk don’t care if you bring in dirt, they can get it cleaned. Poor and middle class don’t care since they are not obsessed with sterility and know how to deal with dirt.
It is only the ones who hate what they are and think if they pretend they are better someone might be stupid enough to agree with them.
I do not revisit a house (not a home, house) that makes me undress to enter.
Smart woman. We have shoes for indoors and ones for out doors. Husband gets his ass chewed off if he mixes the two and treks around the house with his out door shoes. Don’t want chicken, dog crap or liberal Karen germs on my floors!
Smart woman. We have shoes for indoors and ones for out doors. Husband gets his ass chewed off if he mixes the two and treks around the house with his out door shoes. Don’t want chicken, dog crap or liberal Karen germs on my floors!
“...I don’t like stepping in cat barf.”
In your opinion, is it worse to step barefoot in warm or cold cat barf?
Great summary of this. Thanks.
“because I don’t like stepping in cat barf.”
Yeah. That’s a real eye-opener in the middle of the night. Yuk!
I’d eat off that floor. My wife keeps an exceptional house… and no shoes allowed.
Those get left on the porch.
Guests are never asked to remove their shoes as they have normally not been walking through the barn yard.
I do not understand the white carpet thing.
Wow - that ranks up there with the truly dumb statements I've seen on FR. I hate who I am because I don't like people wearing their street shoes in my house. MY house. I think there might be some clouds out today - maybe you could go yell at them.
Well, he probably wouldn’t be visiting my granny’s house much since, being the matriarch of a coal mining family, she always made us take our shoes off before going into her house with all the muck and coal dust on them. BTW, her house used to be a wooden cabin BTW before Granddaddy fixed it up for her in the 1930s. So I’m pretty sure that she didn’t hate who she was, and never pretended to be better than everyone else.
Shoes off so we don’t drag stuff in from the farm. Have some inside shoes that don’t leave the house.
“Are you turning Japanese?”
———————————————
I’m turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Off, back in the day when Auntie had wall-to-wall white shag carpet throughout the house.
That is the considerate thing to do.
Is it terrible to be middle class?
Sucks, but at least fighting gravity is a good thing.
worse to step barefoot in cold cat barf
Means that it laid there waiting a long term and the karma of the entire universe thought you deserved it.
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