pebblerocker | (no subject)

(no subject)

When it's summer and all the ground is dry I keep my gumboots in the wardrobe out of the way. When it was still winter I wouldn't have dreamt of wearing jandals. Spring's in between, which means my front door is cluttered up with gumboots, jandals AND sneakers, in a space that's barely wide enough to carry shopping through. Why can't they design houses with a space for taking off shoes? Why do I have to keep tripping over footwear? Why are houses designed for those uncivilised people who wear their shoes inside?

I always get uncomfortable staying with the in-laws. Everyone gets up in the morning and puts on their shoes, and to me that's a signal that we're leaving, imminently, and I get all jittery because I think I'm going to have to go out without my breakfast.

My man's family is posher than mine. I bet they wear shoes inside because they know a vacuuming will eventuate within the next week.

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I don't think it is a social status thing at all. My parents were very well off and I've been in the homes of many people with a great deal of money that always take off there shoes upon entering the house. I would not let someone walk around my home with shoes on either. It is just unconscionable. Shoes are for the outdoors period. They pick up all sorts of bacteria and other dirt when outside and it is unhealthy to bring it in to your home.

Let me tell you a story about a Japanese baseball player now playing for Boston: When teams travel to other cities to play against rival teams they have to stay at hotels. All hotels in North America are carpeted. Another feature is that they have these horrible box spring (I call them metal beds) mattressed beds that have very soft springs in them to make you sink into the bed. That is the North American idea of comfort. Well Mr. Matsuzaka, rightfully so, refuses to sleep on such contraptions for health reasons. Instead he sleeps on the carpeted floor. One problem with that; North Americans never take their shoes off even on carpet (what is the point of having carpet then?), so he got very, very sick. Now these are supposedly clean rooms too. They are, without a doubt, vacuumed daily. But no amount of vacuuming is going to get all of the bacteria and other microbes out of a carpet; You need disinfectant for that.

So the answer to your bet is no. It really isn't about vacuuming more often. It is just plain old ignorance and a lack of common sense. Not that I want to criticize people I haven't met, but there are a lot of things that people just never think about. From your other post I imagine that these people are also of the mind that scraping the hair from your armpits is somehow "cleaner" and you know for a fact that nothing could be further from the truth, so...

I have also known of many poorer people who without a doubt don't clean there houses that often and wear shoes in the house. I can think of one instance when the person told me that they wouldn't be allowed to walk around the house without footwear because the family is paranoid about glass and other dangerous debris lying about. I found that shocking because if anything like a glass was broken in my home it would be dealt with instantaneously. If nothing else the cat doesn't wear footwear and I wouldn't want her getting hurt.

I don't sweep very often at all, and I don't see that changing, so I like to avoid getting dirt on my (non-carpeted) floor as much as possible. My mother-in-law vacuums often--seems like every day, or almost--so any bits of debris that get dragged in will be whisked away in no time. But that just makes things look clean, there's still stuff sticking to the carpet and falling down between the fibres. I'm very happy not to have carpets.

I'm not terribly worried about bacteria and sanitising things. Immune systems are supposed to deal with that, and those antibacterial things just breed tougher strains of bugs. Wearing shoes inside is, to me, more disrespectful than unhygienic, as if the people wearing shoes think the house is just some shed rather than a place where people live. I can't imagine how they can just walk straight into a house without even pausing. It's very disrespectful and wrong... taboo.

I got thinking about the shoes-off thing when I was reading this post. Two interesting things I picked up from that were that some people consider it disrespectful for you to contaminate their floors with your bare feet, yet grotty shoes are OK, and that people in the UK see taking shoes off in the house as something that only Japanese, Canadians and posh people do. What says the Canadian representative? :P

Eep, I'd far rather have a stray bit of glass in the foot than be sentenced to wearing shoes in the house all the time!

This Canadian says... Canada is so multicultural that there is no consensus. :P

Most people I know take their shoes off in houses. If I had to guess, I figure there would be a better chance of not offending if I took my shoes off instead of leaving them on. But I usually just look to see what the residents of the house are doing, and follow suit.

I grew up in a rural area, where people were always working outside and going in for lunch and going back out, and it was not uncommon for people there to keep their shoes on in the house (as long as the shoes weren't actively shedding dirt or mud or water). The attitude was almost that it was easier to sweep once a day than to bother with taking shoes off every time you had to set foot in the house. None of these houses tended to have carpets, either -- it was all tile or linoleum, maybe with a throw rug wherever people were prone to sitting with shoes off.

In my own apartment now, I sometimes leave my shoes on, and sometimes take them off. Again, all the floors are tiled and easy to clean, and won't be damaged by shoes the way carpet could.

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