Must We Bare Our Soles?
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Health on Friday, April 09, 2010 1:59 PM
Do people wear shoes in your house?
In many countries it’s unheard of to wear shoes in the house.
Hygiene-wise it makes perfect sense—do you know where those shoes have been?
Nevertheless, compulsory shoe removal strikes against my sensibilities.
- I didn’t grow up that way.
- I lived for awhile with a Venezuelan roommate who had a cultural horror of bare feet. One just didn’t take one’s shoes off in front of guests. She rubbed off on me.
- Our old Victorian home is drafty in winter and has its original wood floors: cold and splinters dissuade us from going barefoot.
- I often have threadbare, embarrassing socks.
- I do not relish foot odor, and our guests are often adolescent boys.
- It feels odd to compel guests to take off an item of clothing.
Nonetheless, the custom seems to be spreading, at least in my neck of the woods.
When we were first married, Dennis & I lived in a brand new townhome community. All the houses came with white walls and cream-colored carpets that were impossible to keep clean, so we may have been the only people on the block who didn’t force friends to surrender their shoes at the door.
In our current neighborhood, the practice isn’t as common, but there are a few families who prefer you to enter unshod.
A quick google of the topic turned up some evidence that the practice is on the rise.
Wiki offers helpful hints on how to ask someone to take off their shoes.
Here’s a mom who doesn’t want her baby crawling in shoe detritus and the advice she gets on the topic.
Emily Post doesn’t think it’s quite polite to ask guests to remove their shoes. But she grants exceptions when the weather’s foul or if it’s your cultural practice.
I’m curious how widespread the practice has become. Are people wearing shoes indoors in your neck of the woods? What’s the custom in your house?
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
