taking shoes off

We don't take our shoes off in Australia except on farms.
Perhaps we should!

Although only bedrooms seem to be carpeted and then not all are.

I love Australia 'cause there everyone takes their shoes off as a matter of course! However, here in the UK it's not really accepted is it? I love it when guests offer to take their shoes off but I don't ask anyone to, it's just not the done thing here. Sadly! x

There was a huge splash of phlegm on the pavement when I went out the other day. I just avoided it! The bad weather brings out the coughs and chest infections.

Well I have read all the arguments for making guests pad about in slippers or socks but I still think it is a very odd thing to do!

I can't walk in little stretchy slippers.
and I would probably spill my or

I remember as a child visiting a very grand castle on the Rhine. We all had to put felt overshoes over our regular footwear to protect the wooden floors - and, we suspected, as a sneaky way of giving them a good polish especially as we children instantly started showing off our ice-skating skills!

My last job involved visiting older people in their homes. If there was a pale carpet I would always slip my shoes off. One day I visited a client who was a similar age to myself. I didn't see the need to de-shoe but he asked me to. I complied but, being summer I was not wearing tight. I felt naked and vulnerable sitting there in bare feet. I was glad to cover my feet to leave.

Not all people can walk properly in stretchy, washable slippers. I suppose they soon get to know where they're not welcome though!

(Why does no one ever answer the question about the Police, Ambulance crew or meter readers? Presumably they're exempt, no matter how filthy their shoes are!)

I have cream carpets throughout so I keep a pretty storage box by the front door with stretchy washable slippers of various sizes, so clean slippers every time.

I always slip mine off and would not think my host inhospitable for wanting this. Some people are more houseproud than others. That's ok.
I don't ask visitors to take off shoes but some insist on doing so anyway. I have a long runner in the hall and that gets cleaned or replaced as necessary.

I'm with bags on this one.

So do you actually tell people (such as meter readers, emergency services staff, elderly and disabled neighbourse etc.) to take their shoes off or they can't come in?

I'm amazed at how inhospitable some people seem to be!

I take off my shoes as a matter of course as I enter my own or anyone else's house and I expect visitors to do the same.
I'm not over fussy about cleanliness (never bought Dettol in my life) but nobody's walking over my floors with shoes they've stepped in dog poo or blobs of phlegm.

My proof reading is getting even worse.

Sorry I posted too soon again.

Notanan I am a fan of "peck of dirt" mentality and a confirmed Dettol hater.

Well I hate Dettol's continued campaign to terrify us all into spraying anti bacterial sprays on every surface and our bodies and washing powders in the process they are probably creating a lot more new bugs which will be immune to the good old stand by soap and hot water. (Some people clearly do need extra support to avoid bacteria.)

Dettol's claims are just done to boost the sales of Reckitt who were once just known for lumps of "washing blue".

Esspee I shampoo my carpet about twice a year.
I spend a lot of time crawling around in the mud when working in my garden I cannot comfortably bend down. I do change shoews and trousers then.
I have never caught anything from the carpet or the mud in the garden in last 60 odd years. I would prefer to people take off outdoor shoes because I CBA to have to clean the carpet so often.

My house is carpeted, I don't like cold floors at all. I look at my DDs laminate floors and think it would be so much more comfortable for the little ones to play on a soft warm surface.
As it is my indoor shoes always seem to fall off about the house. I am a cold footed shoe shedder wherever I go.

I have never been asked by anyone I have visited to take my shoes off. Floors and carpets are for walking on. Unless your front door opens directly from street into a living room there is space for a door mat. My hallway is wood flooring. I have a fitted carpet in the front room and a rug on wooden flooring in the back room. Kitchen diner has wooden floor too. I wear slippers in the house in winter for warmth but in summer either barefoot or flip flops around the house. I have not, nor have the DGC who sprawl about on the floor a lot, suffered from bottom of shoe related illness or infection.

When I was 12 years old I stepped (unknowingly) on a sewing needle on my bedroom floor. GP diagnosed a broken bone and strapped a wide bandage round my foot. Three weeks later the bandage came off and I was still in pain. An X-ray surprisingly showed the needle working its way up through the ball of my foot (near my 2 smallest toes) and I needed a general anaesthetic and an overnight hospital stay to remove the needle. Since then I always have something on my feet even if shabby old slippers and I am not happy going barefoot anywhere.
I have one set of friends who ask for outdoor shoes to be removed and I do my best to take my slippers with me. In my house - life is too short to worry.

The blue lightweight plastic overshoes can be useful to slip on when you have done your shoe laces up and suddenly remember something essential you need to retrieve from indoors.

But it is perfectly possible to forget that you have put them on.

One solution is a pair of lightweight ballet pump type shoes/slippers, you can even get them so they roll up in your handbag. I keep a pair of espadrille type shoes (?) to wear as slippers at DD's house or st least I did until last summer when we were in a hurry to get me to the station and I realised on the platform that I had come out in them
I don't like slippers as such, but a pair of lightweight indoor shoes makes sense and is safer than slipping on wooden or tiled floors.

Thatbags, I agree 100%.

As for marble floors, unless you live in an always-hot country then I don't care how expensive they are, I think they're awful, so cold and hard. I did live in a flat with marble floors in Cyprus once - OK in the summer, but bloody freezing in winter - and Cyprus can get very cold.
A neighbour of ours has them - installed by a previous owner - IMO so utterly unsuitable for this climate, where wood or carpet are so much more warm and friendly.

I remember picking up DS1 from a friend's house many years ago and being amazed that he had to find his shoes near the front door to come with me.

When I asked why he took his shoes off at his friend's house and not mine, he responded , "Because his house is cleaner than ours. Hmmm....I wonder how that could be!!

Oh dear! tea on the marble floor not a good situation.

I would be like Hyacinth Bucket's neighbour, spilling the tea.

I think I'd rather not go there in the first place