tangential, but I don't understand why keeping your shoes on in your house is a thing. It's so unsanitary. The bottom of your shoes are in contact with things like the floor of public bathrooms, animal feces (when walking on grass), dirt, mud, etc.
And it's so much more comfortable to be in your house barefoot, with socks or with slippers.
So much cleaner. I'm disgusted when people try to walk in my house with their shoes on.
> tangential, but I don't understand why keeping your shoes on in your house is a thing.
I suspect it depends a lot on the climate, predominant style of housing etc. If you live in a nice climate and everyone has houses with backyards, you expect to be going in and out a lot all day. Very annoying to be constantly putting shoes on/off.
Personally, I just really don't care if the floor of my house is dirty. A thin smear of dog shit? If I can't smell it, I don't care. I'm not licking that floor. I'm not eating food off it. It's floor, it's basically in the same category as the ground outside: dirty.
I think of feet as dirty, so feet that go on the floor make the floor dirty.
Coming from a shoes-on culture I can give a couple points.
First, in the rare cases you describe (when was the last time you stepped on feces?) one would indeed leave their shoes outside. But in the day-to-day your shoes have some dust on them and that's it - you won't even notice it's there when compared to the dust that already accumulates daily. If you live in a climate where this assumption doesn't hold (snowy areas come to mind) then the equation changes.
Second, the floor is usually stone and therefore designed for being walked on with shoes. I would feel awkward walking on some polished wood, but if the difference between inside and outside is "this one is less coarse but just as hard" then I wouldn't see a good reason for taking my shoes off. I would probably avoid the rug, but that's me.
As for comfort, keeping your shoes on also means one less thing to do when going in and out. Do not underestimate the path with less friction.
I have seen in Switzerland that people leave their shoes at the entrance and switch to house shoes. Or they use a shoe cover when they enter house with shoes. Probably because houses are mostly wooden floored.
So shoes on is not universal in the West.
Most of the west outside of the US takes shoes off or swaps 'em for indoor shoes.
Between "Most of the west" and "Asian countries" it seems like it's the vast majority of industrialized countries that take off or swap their shoes inside. There's just an odd blip of over-represented online people who don't.
I'd like to see a citation for "most of the west".
Just not for emergency services!
> when was the last time you stepped on feces?
Try this , when was the last time you stepped somewhere that had previously been stepped on by someone who had walked on a spot which had been stepped on by someone who may have stepped on a spot trod on by ... go far enough back and it's all had feces on it to some small degree.
An easy way to keep this concept clear and understand the reasoning behind a 'leave the outside shoes out of the house' is something learned as a child.
Just like there is a Law of Conservation of Mass, and a Law of Conservation of Energy, and these two are the same law as defined by Einstein, there is also a Law of Conservation of Filth. The law may be stated as: "A spoonful of wine in a barrel of pigshit is a barrel of pigshit. A spoonful of pigshit in a barrel of wine is... a barrel of pigshit."
Taking off the outdoor shoes to come indoors changes the "is there trace amount of feces on my dining room tatami floor?" risk from "I cannot be reasonable sure," to "I can be reasonably sure that there is none." If guests find that too much friction to understand and accommodate, one might argue for a different set of guests who are less accepting of an allowable amount of pigshit in their wine.
I'm going to disagree with your law of "conservation of filth" on the grounds that it's pushing things too far. Whatever amount of feces comes into your system via walking downtown on a regular day and then bringing the shoes inside pales in comparison to the amount of fecal matter that enters via your toothbrush if you keep it in the bathroom. At some point a small amount of dirt is just fine, as evidenced by my immune system not even visibly reacting whenever I pick up and eat something that fell on the floor (as long as I follow the five-seconds rule). And people do go out to restaurants or, even worse, picnics, where all that separates their food from a much filthier surface is a piece of cloth.
I'm not going to say that every type of floor is to be walked on, with rugs and tatami mats being perfect counter-examples. But if a five-star restaurant doesn't ask me to take my shoes off (not evening Japan, AFAIK) then keeping them on is, from a sanitary point of view, probably okay.
The toothbrush analogy is weird, and untrue in most cases. And regardless, just one time stepping in crap, would make up for a lifetime of a few molecules hitting a brush at random intervals.
And of course, toothpaste is a cleaner, so it's not relevant.
But I find this all amusing, because wherever you take your shoes off? That's where all this supposed crap sits from all these shoes left outside. Which means you are walking in your socks in that area, after shoe removal, and entering the house.
So unless you levitate out of that area, your feet are still covered in this supposed crap.
The shoe rule in Japan stems from damaging floors. And checking your feet, shoes or not, is just prudent. But your feet or clean looking shoes?
Equally dirty.
Of course one should not put the feet down where the shoes are stored.
So do you levitate from the place you remove your shoes?
How much time have you spent in Japan? The bare foot never touches the genkan floor. It's alarming to do so.
If you can't imagine how that's possible, look up some videos of their use.
When I grew up a half of century ago in East Europe, keeping your shoes on when entering a house was still considered as an unacceptable behavior.
However, later this changed, in good part because much of the population moved from bigger rural houses to smaller apartments in the cities. In a small apartment, there was not enough space to have at the entrance a big enough wardrobe with dedicated places for the visitors to store their shoes, and to provide slippers for them. Moreover, a small apartment was easier to clean after the visitors left.
Thus the customs changed, and it became normal when visitors came and attempted to remove their shoes, according to tradition, to assure them that there is no need to do that. Nowadays I think that few remember that in the past it was really mandatory to never enter a house with your shoes on.
Most prople I kmow live in appartment and take off shoes. It does not take much space.
Nothing like that.
Cleanliness is overrated. Sure, it's great for surgery and if you actually have a wound, but your immune system needs pathogens to train on, or it does silly things like attacking your body, or reacting to pollens.
It civilized to live in a clean home instead of a dirty mess. Life is not just about maximizing your survival rate.
I'm the same way but if I pass out in my house I absolutely do not give a shit about any of that and don't want the EMTs wasting time taking their shoes off to save my ass.
Plus walking barefoot in your home is a good way to sense when you need to sweep or vacuum.
I’d say it’s a good way to tell when you should have swept up a few days ago.
Do you have a pet dog or cat?
An indoor cat would still be consistent with this philosophy. They do their business indoors, but so do humans.
Anecdote, I recall reading about older family members being disgusted by the removal of outhouses and the idea of shitting indoors.
There's nothing unsanitary about it. The bottoms of your shoes simply are not that dirty unless you're walking through abnormally dirty situations.
That's the whole function of shoes though. If outside was as clean as my floors at home, I wouldn't need shoes.
I have to imagine the person who leaves their shoes on either never goes outside, or just has filthy floors.
That is not the primary function of shoes. The function of shoes is to support your feet, protect them from harsh surfaces, keep them dry.
Unlike the commenter above you, I don’t really agree that it’s completely sanitary, though. I’m just saying that keeping you clean is actually pretty far down the list.
Another thing about whether the floor is sanitary: that changes a lot based on how you use your floor. If you eat, sleep, or sit on the floor often like in a traditional Japanese home, keeping the floor clean is a lot more important.
The "support your feet" argument came from the belief that everyone is supposed to have a prominent arch and that shoes could force your feet into that shape, but as far as I knew had been thoroughly refuted over the past 15-20 years. Forcing your feet into having an arch when it's not your natural form can actually cause problems further down the line. Soles not being flexible also changes how you use your ankle and IIRC how you balance while walking, possibly contributing to back problems.
Keeping your feet clean and protecting them from surfaces are the primary purposes of shoes. Some people need them for support after having worn shoes too often (my parents are in this situation and have a separate set of "indoor shoes" just for this), or some sort of disability that needs those super-wide-sole shoes, but in general they are not for supporting your feet.
I’m really not talking about arches, just talking about easing uneven terrain and enhancing grip and things like that.
Hiking boots can significantly enhance stability and of course walking over sharp rocks becomes trivial.
I also forgot to mention steel toed boots, no slip restaurant shoes, and other injury-protective shoes.
Then you’ve got temperature: hot pavement, cold snow.
> That's the whole function of shoes though.
Nah, the main function of shoes is (to support your feet and) prevent injury. Cleanliness is second on the list.
[ed.: added braces]
Your feet do not need support, they were evolved over millions of years to support themselves. Someone who habitually wears shoes indoors might lose the muscle strength in their feet in the same way someone who drives everywhere loses leg strength, but this isn't natural or optimal.
Sorry, I phrased that poorly. The muscular support is its own thing (and I agree with you) but your soles don't deal well with hot summer asphalt surfaces, glass shards or even small pebbles surfaces.
I agree, but those bits of glass shards and pebbles end up wedged in shoes and released indoors. Shoes outdoors are important, but the exact stuff they are protecting you against is the stuff you don't want in your carpets.
Agreed. But you have to go shoeless throughout your youth so that the bones and muscles of the foot grow strong. This is true, for example, with kids in some African countries. There was a trend of barefoot running in the US in the 2010's (see Barefoot Sensei), but most people who tried this ended up quitting it as it's hard to shift to this style in, say, your 40's, after a lifetime of wearing shoes.
> But you have to go shoeless throughout your youth so that the bones and muscles of the foot grow strong.
Well, more directly, if you want to be going around barefoot outside, you have to go barefoot for a while in order to harden the skin on the bottom of your feet. It will happen naturally, given enough time, but walking around outdoors with soft feet will hurt like crazy. Bones and muscles are secondary.
In an American context, the primary reason to wear shoes is to prevent parasites on the ground from infecting you through your feet. Shoes are the single most important public health measure in American history, beating out handwashing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necator_americanus
We didn't evolve to walk on concrete and asphalt, though.
Our feet were not evolved to walk over stone and concrete all day.
> they were evolved over millions of years to support themselves.
But not on hard floor.
People in shoes off houses tend to have slippers or house shoes, which never go outside. They also tend to have bathroom slippers, which are only ever used in the toilet areas.
It depends what you do outside. Historically shoes/boots/foot wraps were to protect your feet from the cold and from sharp things e.g. rocks, stones, spiky plants, spiders, snakes, ticks etc etc. Surely some of these conditions would still exist today even if outside was clean.
Like outside? It's so wild to me how some can step into their living space (or even bedroom) with the same shoes they use outside.
Having grown up in South Africa, moving to the states was the first time I ever heard of such a thing as a peanut allergy, or shrimp allergy, or gluten allergy, or any kind of allergy that wasn't having to wear a medic-alert bracelet to indicate an allergic reaction to penicillin.
Removing one's shoes before entering a house isn't a thing in South Africa.
Filth can sometimes be a good thing.
I've lived in both shoes on and shoes off households and I'm sorry, but shoes are filthy. I wipe my dogs paws when they comes in from walks and their paws are filthy and I wipe them every single time they come back in from walks. Shoes are never wiped.
Take a second, get a tissue, and go wipe the bottom of your shoe.
Every country is different. I’m in China right now and while there isn’t much rubbish - it is still pretty dirty. Whereas in New Zealand you can walk barefoot all day and your feet will stay clean (matter of fact thats my kids do literally all the time).
Then sanitation itself is a but of a moot. Bacteria can spread million different ways, it’s mostly futile fight. If you wear flip-flops all day and don’t wash your feet, don’t shower after using public bathrooms, etc - whats the point?