Houses with 'No Shoe' Rules - Page 9

RSS next time you come to visit I'll be sure to find you a pair of house slippers.

In all honesty, in wet or snowy conditions, we find that a no shoe policy keeps our floors cleaner (we have a mixture of hard wood floors in the public spaces and carpet in the bedrooms). In the warm months, our house is warm enough that I go barefoot at home. In winter, I put on house slippers or sock...

I put shoes on when I'm expecting guests.

I don't wear my dress shoes when I get home. I put on a pair of loosely laced sneakers or flip flops, which are both extremely comfortable.

Guess what, the house gets dirty regardless. You should be cleaning it frequently anyway.

Obviously if I'm wearing snow boots, I will remove them on tiled surfaces. However, the question is whether shoes are worn in the home, not necessarily whether the boots you just walked through the slush are worn in your home.

might want to move.

This is not complicated. Wake up, get out of bed, walk to bathroom in whatever you are currently wearing. Shower, dry off, walk to bedroom, dress, done.

I have this lovely thing called heat in my home, which allows me to walk from my bathroom to my bedroom either without clothing or in a towel.

Then again, its not that much of a burden to bring a pair of undergarments and a t-shirt with you into the bathroom.

But what if I need my shoes to charge my gadgets?

Also on a few points others have made...I am not from a warm climate, I have lived only in places with icky winters. In the winter if it has been a few days since it last snowed, the ground outside is usually clear and dry, but otherwise people always remove shoes or boots without question (or remove boots to put on shoes). Nobody in this thread is saying that they would walk around their own house in muddy boots.

Second, as someone else mentioned, this applies most to short visits and parties...you show up at someone's place before going to dinner and have to wait for them to get ready...who wants to untie and retie shoes for a 5 minute visit? If you are going to be lounging around on their couch for hours watching a movie, of course shoes come off for comfort.

As to the unwashed raw denim...maybe that is a bit extreme, but what about wool pants and suits? How often do you clean them? SF approved cleaning is very infrequent as long as you keep them brushed (just like brushing off your feet) and your pants spend many (sometimes sweaty) hours sitting on an office chair which has probably never been washed and has been sat on my all manner of pants--unwashed denim, suits that you sat on a nasty park bench in, khakis that enjoyed a nice brush with the bathroom floor when you were taking a dump.

Strangely, not all the people who live with me want to see me naked. Odd, that.

This issue is fascinating. Wasn't there a thread on it a couple years back that got out of hand?

People have very strong feelings about this!

Based on the responses in this thread, it seems that most people fall into the 'shoes off inside rule'.

Regardless, I can't see us changing how we do things at home.

Off of foot, you mean?

Do what you want. If I invite you over, I assume you're responsible enough to not fuck my home up and that you can comprehend whether your shoes are dirty or not.

I think as hosts it is important to make your guests feel as welcome as possible - and that graciousness puts the guest's comfort above the mere maintenance of 'things'.

But I also think there is a distinction between frequent guests who might be very close to you and occasional guests who are in your home only once for a large cocktail party or only occasionally for a dinner etc. etc.

In other words - if you have a no shoes policy in your home then I think it's fine to make it known to those who visit your home frequently. But conversely it's just rude in my mind to make infrequent guests abide by such rules. If whatever you have on your floors is so precious to you that you can't abide it taking a little dirt or a spill then either roll it up before you have the event or don't entertain people in your home.

I for one, find it a little off putting to be made to feel like the host's rugs are more important to them than I am.

I do respect that in some locales and cultures shoes off inside is the norm and in that case I'm in full support of it - as guests would have reason to expect to follow local customs.

And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules...

In that case, I would keep the shoes on but not venture far inside the home. I wouldn't want a guest to have shoes on and walk around my living room or bedroom but it's ok to have shoes on and wait near the front door if we're going out in a few minutes.

It pretty much comes to common sense:

• Take shoes off to keep the floor clean (this is also a mental thing - even if your shoes are not dirty, the idea that you've walked thru who knows what on the street is what makes people perceive them as dirty, thus it does not apply to other garments)
• Take shoes off to make yourself more comfortable (who wants to wear shoes all day?). Sweaty feet should not be an issue, nobody is going around sniffing your feet and hopefully your diet and whatnot isn't something that causes your feet to smell like a garbage dump from further away.
• Keep shoes on if you're going out the door in a moment.