You must be Finnish. Or Inuit. 
There’s something about a warm apartment that’s just… cosy. Especially when it’s thirty below outside.
Shoes left on at my place. I can’t see the point of leaving shoes and boots outside all night. I have to remember which of my friends’ places have the shoes-off rule, though. Still, I make enough social faux-pas around here, one more won’t rock the boat too much.
I grew up in NorCal and no one took their shoes off.
I’ve lived in Asia 20+ years and I feel uncomfortable now going to someone’s house where they don’t take shoes off. It’s just cleaner. Also, most Asian households have a nice collection of slippers to wear indoors. Although, I personally still prefer bare feet except when it’s cold.
I prefer the clean part versus the hassle of shoes on/shoes off when going inside and outside.
In Korea everyone took their shoes off, of course. Here, I go either way. In my apartment we usually wear slippers or go barefoot. Guests can do whatever they want. I prefer shoes off but I’m not going to say anything to my guests either way - shoes track in a bit of dirt, but that’s what vacuum cleaners are for. When I go to someone else’s house it depends, although generally we all take our shoes off unless it’s a fancy party - then most people will have their shoes on. Honestly, I don’t understand all the strong feelings surrounding the subject. They’re just shoes. If you need shoes for medical reasons I’m pretty sure your host isn’t going to be a douche and insist you take them off.
Many, if not most rentals here advertise they have new carpeting. My dad is a carpet installer in a different state and the majority of his repeat customers are condominium/rental management changing carpet between tenants.
In our apartment, the patch in front of the door is noticeably grayer than the rest of the place, and there is a blackish spot that I haven’t really investigated. It was like that when we moved in. But they did paint (kinda sloppily) before we moved in, leading me to conclude they painted the place themselves to save money, and were too cheap to spring for new carpet.
I’m moving this month. 
I hate shoes and kick them off anywhere I can. I think shoes are for protecting the feet when outside. Other than that, take 'em off.
Japan is of course famous for this, and since I prefer walking around in my socks anyway I took to it immediately.
When I was growing up (in suburban Boston), one usually kept their shoes on in the house, and my mother would constantly get pissed off that I was in my socks. When I came home a couple of years ago, however, she admitted that she wished everyone took their shoes off, since it would keep the floors so much cleaner.
Pretty much every household in Japan keeps a rack of slippers by the front entrance for guests. Even though I don’t recall ever having more than four guests at a time, my MIL has stocked our place with at least a dozen pairs.
To further confuse the issue, slippers were traditionally only to be worn in rooms with wooden (or nowadays carpeted or linoleum) floors. When you go into a room with tatami reed mat flooring, you then take off the slippers as well (barefoot is fine). Plus there are also special slippers you put on when you go into the toilet. Rather, the room with the toilet, not actually in the… oh, never mind.
For China Guy, HazelNutCoffee and all the other Dopers living in Asia, do you feel a twinge of discomfort watching American TV or movies, when (and for some reason it seems to happen very frequently) there’s a scene with a kid going to his room and getting on his bed still wearing shoes?
Mrs. Sub were watching a video that had a scene like this, and she turned asked semi-seriously, “do you do that when I’m not at home?”
Exactly. I can’t stand wearing shoes. If I have to pee so bad I’m crossing my legs as I come in the door, I will kick my shoes off between the door and the bathroom. It has zero to do with protecting my floors, and everything to do with thinking that shoes are confining. It would be like…wearing mittens all the time or something. It’s too horrible even to think about. I take my shoes off pretty much wherever I go, including under the table at restaurants (I either tuck my feet under me or I sit with my feet ON my shoes. I don’t put my bare feet on the dirty floor).
I also almost always sit on my feet. I have extremely low blood pressure and my feet fall asleep if I sit with my feet on the floor. Plus I’m really short and it helps me be taller. My feet don’t sweat or stink (it’s almost creepy how they don’t) so I don’t think it’s in any way gross to be barefoot in someone’s house. I think it is way grosser to think about what is on the bottom of my shoes and walking that all over someone’s house. Ask me how often I scrub my feet with soapy water, then ask me how often I do the same to my shoes. The answers are daily and never, respectively. You do the math.
Anyway, I don’t ask people to take their shoes off in my house (like I said, I’m not concerned about the floors–unless you’ve got big melty hot blobs of tar dripping off your boots or something) but psychologically I feel like if people keep their shoes on, it means they are about to leave or they are not committing to being comfortable in my home. I realize this isn’t rational, since some people are actually more comfortable in shoes, bizarre as that seems to me, but it’s my unconscious reaction to people keeping their shoes on when they visit. I will often offer, like “feel free to take your shoes off” so that they know that it’s ok, since some people, I guess, think it’s rude to take shoes off in other people’s houses. I’d hate for someone to be suffering with shoes because they thought it would bother me if they took them off. Like I said, for me it would be like expecting people to keep mittens or gloves on while they were at my house.
:eek: People do that!? I have heard the cliche of “get your shoes off the couch” and stuff but I always filed it away as the kind of scolding you do with children kind of like “don’t touch the stove”. People over, like, 3 or 4 wouldn’t actually get on their bed with shoes, would they?? :eek: That’s so icky!
Nobody’s said anything about how hot and icky your feet can get wearing shoes all the time. I don’t have foot problems per se, but it’s just so much nicer to be without shoes in the house - it’s cool and comfortable in summer and it’s even pleasant in winter.
When I was a kid, we wore shoes in the house but we only had the odd mat on the floor. Now I have wall-to-wall, you better dang well take those shoes off. I can vacuum all I want, but if there’s dirty shoes on them, I have to get the rugs shapmooed more often, which is not cheap, so unless you wish to pay a fee to wear your shoes in my place, take them off.
Anyway, do you see what kind of crud is on the sidewalk and street? People spit. There’s gum. Blechhh. I don’t want street crap all over my house, thanks.
As for parties and fancy dress, carry a pair of dress shoes. We who live(d) in cold climes got used to wearing boots and changing to shoes when we got inside; not much difference when it comes to wearing street shoes and changing to ‘indoor’ shoes, especially when someone has carpets. And if you have stinky feet, carry your own slippers. You can even buy fancy shoebags to carry your shoes in if you want.
Can I answer this for the Canadians? Watching American tv, I was always perplexed by everyone stomping around the house in shoes until {rays of sunlight bursting through the clouds}THE DOPE THREADS!!! Then it all became so clear to me. I still hate to see anyone hanging around on beds in their shoes, though. Shoes really get taken off before the bedrooms.
enipla, everyone finding and putting their shoes back on after the house party is part of the cultural thing. We don’t all leave en masse because we know there will be a bottle-neck at the door. I could write books about our shoes-off culture - the places and times that you always take shoes off, the times and places you sometimes take shoes off, the places you never take shoes off, how relationships change when you have been at house parties together with everyone in socked feet, how close you need to be to someone before you’ll invite them to a shoes-off party, the etiquette of asking or not asking someone to take their shoes off; I’m dead serious when I say it has become a cultural thing in Canada.
I’m a shoes off in the house kinda of person: picked up the habit while living in Hawai’i. I think there it’s partly the Asian influence, partly to make it easier to keep the floors clean: sand is a royal pain to deal with. (Just when you thought you had gotten all of it off of your shoes… now just imagine trying to get it out of carpet or keep it from scratching the finish on a wood floor!)
Now if I were still living in Hawai’i I’d think it a bit odd if someone was visiting and didn’t take off their shoes, barring health concerns of some sort (diabetic, must wear orthopedic inserts/shoes, etc.). But since I’m on the mainland, while I generally don’t wear shoes while in the house I’m not about to get all frowny faced at a friend who visits and doesn’t take off their shoes. If they’re a welcomed visitor to my house, it’s more about their comfort level not mine.
<< Instead of using a loom, we’ve going to wind all the yarn into balls and adopt an infinite number of kittens. >>
The whole “here are some slippers to for the evening” sort of blows me away too.
“Get me some clean underware while you’re at it”
Ever heard of fungus and athleates feet. Umm. No thanks.
To me it’s like asking me to ware a special hat in the house. One used by many other guests.
I’m not a germ-a-phobe. Not at all. But I do know that I do have flare ups of athletes foot. I don’t wan’t to impart that on you or your next guest. And I sure don’t want to get it from the previous one and ware their slippers.
If you want a ‘clean’ house I think that the last thing that you would want is guests walking around without shoes on.
Dirt is easy.
Growing up in an old farm house in Michigan, shoes were usually exchanged for slippers or “indoor shoes” near the back door. We had old hardwood floors that sometimes had splinters. We didn’t have many guests over, but most people wore their shoes in the house, as I recall. My mother wasn’t house-proud and it wasn’'t an issue.
Now, I take my shoes off if they are wet or muddy – in the breezeway by the back door. In the house, light shoes or slippers, although I used to go barefoot in the house. What convinced me some protective footwear would be a good thing was the incident with the edge of a door ripping off my big toenail. :eek:
You should! Judging from this thread it would probably be an instant best-seller and you’d never have to work again…
Me too, I even kick them off at work. People think I’m eccentric, but no one has ever complained.
This reminds me of the Moroccan restaurant we went to in Boulder years ago. Forty pairs of shoes, easy. It was something of a clusterfuck to find the right ones and not sit or fall on the person next to you.
That’s the best way to do it, I think. It’s your house after all. I have more Asian friends than Western ones, I think, and one thing that makes things awkward is when I go to visit, and they insist I keep my shoes on in the house, although they don’t themselves. Problem is, I don’t want to. Their insistence I don’t bother taking them off is very well-intentioned, but I’d prefer they simply asked me to do it. My closest friends now know how I feel and just don’t mention it.
I grew up in a shoes on house, but it feels as strange as hell to me now. It’s like going to bed in office clothes or something.
Also, working on the assumption that the shoes-off people want them off, and the shoes-on people are really actually “don’t care” people (I’m unaware of any culture or subculture that INSISTS on shoes on in the house), it’s easiest for guest and host alike to default to shoes off.
And it’s cleaner, dammit.
I’m from Alberta (where the OP lives) and I’ll second almost everything she’s said, but I’ll be a little more surly about it since I’ve lived in the US five years now. 
We are a shoes-OFF house, although it has taken my American husband the last five years to catch on, and my Canadian-born son the last five years to forget. I’m forever telling him to take off his shoes. We have sort of cream-coloured carpet and it’s disgusting despite repeated cleanings, due to the previous occupants of our home.
Me? I’m always barefoot, unless I have to have something on my feet. At the in-laws’ house I always make sure to wear my shoes or at least socks, because that’s just what they do. Mom-in-law gets up, gets dressed, and the shoes go on; they don’t come off until it’s bedtime.