I find the shoes on in the house thing odd. I don’t know anyone 'round here (Canada) that would leave the shoes on in the house, including during summer months. I just worry about getting the carpet dirty.
Fortunately, neither of us has to worry about that.
Oh, I did not mean to imply it’s only Thailand. It’s just that’s where I live. It’s that way all over East and Southeast Asia. South Asia, too, based on the limited number of places I’ve been there.
Not unless it’s regional. I never encountered it at all in West Texas, Oklahoma or Arkansas. (I mean, assuming they weren’t hillbillies and actually HAD shoes. :)) Nor in many other nearby states in the South and West.
In Albuquerque, I remember one house that had a little sign outside about they were practicing the “Asian way” I believe it said and asked that everyone take their shoes off; that’s the only time I ever encounteerd it in all of New Mexico.
In Hawaii, I saw it a lot of course, but it was not universal there.
I don’t wear shoes in the house because I prefer barefoot. I like to be able to pick things up with my toes. But I don’t insist guests take their shoes off. I offer if they want to, but that’s it.
If the world weren’t full of pebbles, snow, and bits of broken glass, I’d probably cheerfully wander through life barefoot, but fortunately there are shoes out there that are cute enough to make up for having to stick my foot in a cage.
My parents tried to implement the “no shoes in the house” rule, at least for family. (I don’t think they’d ever ask guests to remove their shoes; my parents would think that was a rude, maybe even tacky request.) They don’t have carpet in their house, but it’s all hardwood floors and my dad is always worried about them getting worn out from people’s shoes grinding dirt into them. Plus the shoe-dirt equals more vacuuming for them to do, and who wants to do unnecessary housework?
I take off my shoes in my house, and most other houses, but that’s because I don’t really like wearing shoes. The only time I keep them on in someone’s home is if I feel uncomfortable and want to be able to make a quick exit, or if I’m wearing old socks or something and am embarrassed about it.
I’ve always wondered if it doesn’t have to do with both the weather, and a classist remenent. I grew up in Kentucky, and there was still a definite feeling from some of my neighbors that “people who ran around barefoot were either poor or trash” handed down from people’s grandmothers. Kids could get by with barefoot, but adults - even teenagers - wearing your shoes was a sign of not being straight out of the hills. There was a slight debutante feeling to that world - women who never went out without makeup and their purse matching their shoes were NOT going to be kicking off said shoes when they went visiting. And if they themselves weren’t Belle’s, most of them seemed to want to be.
On the other hand, I was born in Minnesota and brought back here before I was too old. Here, with slushy weather, you take your shoes off at the door in most homes - which just translates to “lots of people think its normal to take off your shoes all the time.”
When I was in college, I had a job delivering furniture. From time to time we would run into a no shoes homeowner who expected us to remove our shoes each time we brought in a piece of furniture. This was in Oregon, where it rained nine months of the year, so i damn well wasn’t going out to the truck in my stocking feet, which would have dragged in the mud in any case. So I told her, no shoes, no service; you may put down newspapers if you like, but if my shoes are not allowed, you don’t get your furniture. There was a little pissing and moaning, but eventually she got over it, and we delivered the furniture with our shoes on.
There are no hard-and-fast rules in my house about shoes, I will get annoyed if people bring in lots of mud with them though. Most people keep theirs on.
Personally, I hate wearing shoes (and socks), my toes scream out for freedom! Those shoes are off the moment I get indoors. I only do that in my own home though, I don’t know anyone who has a shoes-off policy (sadly).
Sortof. My wife is Korean, so of course she takes her shoes off at home. When her Korean friends come over, it’s shoes off as they come in. It’s second nature. Like when you brush your teeth, you spit. You don’t think about it, you just do it.
Myself? I’m halfway in the habit at our house. I did not grow up in a “shoes off” household, nor knew anyone who did. So it’s sortof hit or miss.
However, when visiting other Korean families, I take my shoes off. First, if I did not, I would be incredibly rude. Second, I would be the only person walking around with shoes on, and who wants to be the weirdo? ( 
) Again, it’s not a matter of honoring a specific request, it’s just what everyone does. Each Korean household has a “shoe repository” right next to the door. Usually just a square piece of tile or linoleum with a bunch of shoes collected there.
It is the norm throughout the Middle East as well as in much of Central / Eastern Europe too.
I think it’s weird that people would consider it rude if someone who has a shoes-free house asks you to take your shoes off. You’re a guest in their home - just like you wouldn’t smoke or chew gum or curse if that was the custom in the house. But I have a lot of Asian friends, and it’s pretty much standard operating procedure with them. In fact, I usually ask if it’s a shoes off house when I visit a house for the first time.
Socks are like underwear, dude. I try to ensure I wear a clean pair every day. Or if I’m in sandals, I keep my feet clean.
I’m extremely thankful that I can take my shoes off without any negative odors associated, but some people are not so lucky. I used to have foot odor that could set off fire alarms and kill flies. One time while this was still an issue, I was visiting my sister and was told that “shoes go there”, meaning the small area by the door.
I knew my BIL was a fastidious vacuumer, and did as one does in Rome. They had four cats, all of which pooped in one of two litter boxes, and buried their poo. They walked around the place all day tracking kitty litter all over. My BIL’s love of vacuuming started before he got cats (he was one of my roommates) and maybe that helped things as far as kitty litter goes.
So, we’re sitting there watching a movie, and BIL moves toward the other side of the couch, clearly affected by my foot odor. Sis follows by inching away from me ever so slightly. The elephant in the room is getting annoying, so I apologized for stinking up the immediate area. They were still clearly disgusted, but insisted that there was no problem.
I felt like I wasn’t welcome, shoes on or off. Obviously they would rather have had me there and comfortable, than feel shunned, but that’s not how it played out.
I have a friend who is also a friend of the other guy I mentioned. That was not really clear. Anyways, friend A is morbidly obese. He’s maybe 5’6" or 5’7", and is well over 300 lbs. He and I went to friend B’s house one night to check out his new Wii (insert dumb joke here). Friend A sees the shoes by the door, and the shoe-less people inside. He sits down on the stairs and starts untying his shoes. This is not an easy task for him unfortunately. He’s pretty much the nicest guy I know, and will go out of his way to make everyone happy.
Friend B sees friend A struggling, but he’s a smart guy. If he says that friend A can keep his shoes on, it’s clearly exclusionary in regards to the rest of the people there. He certainly doesn’t want it to come across as “It’s ok, you’re fat. Keep your shoes on.” When I go to friend B’s house, I always wear slip on shoes, regardless of how dumb or inappropriate they might be.
I have no opinion whatsoever about people’s preferences in regards to this, unless I’m likely to encounter them. It seems to me that there are three ways of dealing with this, with subtleties for each.
Type 1 would be a household where you are specifically told to take off your shoes. Exceptions might be granted for those that refuse.
Type 2 would be a household in which all of the family members, and possibly most of the guests take off their shoes as a matter of practice. There would be no direct statement to anyone about taking them off, but it would stand out if one didn’t.
Type 3 would be a household that has no set guidelines about shoe wearing indoors. This would be kept sensible, by making sure that people whose shoes were clearly dirty, would be asked to remove them.
This is not scientific by any means, and if anyone has a better description of the continuum, by all means post it.
I’m not obsessed with, nor vexed by this issue. I just find it interesting to discuss.
Also, had I known that this was already a topic that had been trainwrecked, I would never have posted.
That is enough from me, I think.
No shoes, and rarely pants.
Shoes off when we’re inside. But that is only because we are probably hillbillies, and we all run around the house barefoot year 'round.
In the winter, we have slippers, if our feet get too chilly.
There is no ‘rule’ here, though. We have hardwood floors, tile and carpet throughout the house, and it doesn’t bother me if someone doesn’t remove their shoes when coming inside.
The floors seem to be no more dirty either way, so, it’s no big deal.
I grew up in a strictly enforced “no shoes in house” household.
When people come to my home, it’s obvious that we’re a mostly no shoes household, but I do not expect people to remove shoes in my house and they know it. I want them to be comfortable.
However, I must note, that when my own mother doesn’t remove her shoes, I grit my teeth. It’s not like she’s visiting from out of town. She only lives about 10 miles away, so is a frequent visitor here. She claims her shoes aren’t dirty. Um, Mom, it’s raining out, you’ve just left the mall, which has an oily, dirty parking lot, and now you want to walk on my very light colored carpets. I’ve politely called her on it, but she just claims her shoes aren’t dirty. :rolleyes: :dubious: I only call her on it because she was so strict about her own house. I feel she should show me the same respect.
I’ve noted (and this included my kids’ friends) that probably about 75% of the folks who come here remove their shoes upon entering. They don’t ask, they just do it. I think this mainly because they either grew up this way, or currently live in such a household.
No shoe households are extremely common around here, so I don’t find it odd at all. I don’t know if it’s because of our extremely wet winters, or because of the very large military presence here. Because of the large military presence, we have a large variety of nationalities and they all seem to have no-shoe households.
Wall-to-wall carpeting is tacky as all hell anyway especially if everyone has to adapt their lifestyle around it. We only have one room with carpeting and that is the master bedroom after you have to walk over 100 feet up the stairs and through through the rest of the house to get there anyway so the dirt will have dropped off. White wall-to-wall carpeting is an indication of a mental disorder (Here kitties, my precious) and should not be be coddled under any circumstances.
My house is 250 years old. The floors are original and I am pretty confident that the people during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII weren’t that concerned about shoes in the house yet here we are and everything looks great.
The whole practice is an abomination just from a lifestyle standpoint. It isn’t just fem, it is also dysfunctional and indicates misplaced priorities. We take our shoes off when they are dirty but why is someone’s mental priority focused on the floor? As mentioned above, no one takes of their shoes at places like elegant restaurants so why at your house? Disposable medical scrubs are cheap so it could be more effective just to leave various sizes in carefully marked bins in a specially constructed holding area before people get to the front door.
Harumph! We had wall-to-wall in the last place we owned, and I don’t THINK we’re tacky. Hard to judge these things about oneself on one’s own, though, so you never know.
Shoes off.
No carpets in my house. But I find few things as glorious as the warmth of beautiful hardwood floors under my bare feet. I love the floors and often sit on them to sort things, cut cloth, read papers, play with children. All of the joy disappears if dirt is tracked in from outside.
Of course for parties and such I can and do make exceptions. But as soon as everyone leaves I sweep directly.
Remember how your gym teacher wouldn’t let anyone walk on the floors with street shoes? That’s because street grit is harsh on hardwood floors. And I have beautiful 100 yr old, intricately inlaid with cherry, hardwood.
So, partly because I love the feel of clean floors on bare feet and partly because it’s bad for the hardwood. Also I want my floors cleaner than the street I live on, because I sit on them often. And partly because I live in the cold north where in the winter you remove your footwear as a matter of course.
It has nothing to do with favoring their carpet over your company. You’d have to be a narcisist to believe this. It’s been ranted over and over in this thread about carpet longevity and all that crap. It isn’t so much that, as its someone who spends a couple grand on new carpet, doesn’t want a tracking of dirt over time. What is the problem with not wanting that? It leaves a noticiable trail that looks like railroad tracks and makes it all look like shit. Sure, the carpet threads are still there and intact, but it looks like shit.
Its like waxing your car and then all your buddies leaning up on it. It’s ludicrous. But it doesn’t mean you love your car more then your friends, but you shouldn’t allow your friends to disrespect your property either. Your wifes siblings don’t love their carpet more then you, but they did pay good money for it, and you should respect that. If you can’t, well, it’s just sad that you can’t.
I wonder why you have thorns getting tracked into the house? :dubious:
Do us a favor, when you do eventually spring for that new carpet, go atleast 6 months without shoe tracking, and report on the thorn status. 