I thought it was about foot health, as in "it cannot be healthy to wear shoes all the time". For me any time I can get out of my shoes I feel deep relief and it feels as if my feet can "finally breathe freely again" and I feel "more grounded" if my feet can feel the floor (yes, even with slippers).
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 4h ago
Sometimes I use the trick from Die Hard: make fists with your feet, flexing the toes. That stretch is very relieving after wearing shoes
john-h-k · 5h ago
I was mid way through my evening floor-lick, took my normal 5m HN break, and I see this. Will make sure people take their shoes off!
jdboyd · 4h ago
I get that shoes off is supposedly cleaner, but how does much difference does that make if one has a cat or dog as well?
We are a mostly shoes off for ourselves, but do what you want for guests.
RetroTechie · 6h ago
Bacteria on the soles of your shoes != you get sick. Some germs (limited numbers) may actually be good for you.
andrewstuart2 · 5h ago
Right. If this is a no-brainer, the author gives no compelling evidence to support it. Show me something tied to adverse health outcomes. I mean, you're significantly more likely to step on something that punctures your foot without shoes and that's an adverse outcome with as much support (though without actual stats admittedly) as the article gives.
blacksmith_tb · 3h ago
"Step on something that punctures your foot" indoors? Your floors must be more dangerous than mine... I think having house slippers (including a couple of extra pairs for guests) could split the difference?
an_aparallel · 5h ago
I use public restrooms. Get on public transport, walk on curbs with dried piss...i get that "shoes on/off" is mainly cultural (mideast/asian - off, anglo - mainly on)...) But are folks really that gross? I get immunity building, but i do like some baseline hygeine.
m463 · 1h ago
What about shoes-off and everyone getting athletes foot?
AStonesThrow · 5h ago
When I was in high school, a certain friend came over to visit and he was shocked, shocked I tell you, that we were strictly a shoes-on household, and none of us had ever given it much thought; that's just how we lived, with our shoes on. Shortly after that, we would remodel our home and expose a lot of bare wood flooring, which is unpleasant if you're barefoot, I must say! We were also cat-owners (mostly indoor cats), and my mother would constantly shame me in advance, every time I wanted to trim my nails, that I must never leave a scrap of nail to fly onto the floor, because she would inevitably find it, as she was the "barefoot outlier" of our typically shoes-on policy.
Living alone for the last 30 years, I gradually developed a strictly shoes-off household. I've found it's easier to organize my shoes if they're doffed in one place by the door, and as a renter, I prefer to keep a clean carpet, because landlords don't really clean them, they only replace them after disasters. So a tenant's carpet tends to just accumulate nasty stains until it's unusable.
However, my fiancée came in from Barcelona and she was appalled at my barefoot habits! She said it would never do at her home! She immediately found slippers for me to wear, and that was a lot of trouble, because I am not accustomed to wearing slippers and I tended to slip out of them at all times. But she owned a cat, and cats tend to leave little surprises on the floor for us to find with our feet. And I'm unsure whether that's why fiancée wanted to enforce slipper-wearing, but it sure was a big deal for her.
n1b0m · 4h ago
Having always lived in a shoes off house hold I find wearing shoes in the house very strange. At what point would you put them on after waking up if say you were spending the whole morning at home?
mortar · 3h ago
For me, my shoes are predominately thongs (also referred to as flip flops in others parts of the world), and they’re directly next to my bed. They provide arch support which would otherwise leave me aching walking around the house presumably onto the flooring with little to no underlay.
I wear them non-stop until I hit the shower - I only have one pair but my wife has exponentially more and cycles through her pairs constantly, with a ritual cleanse in the shower for each used pair at least once a week.
n1b0m · 2h ago
That makes sense. I’ve mostly lived in houses with carpeted rooms so barefoot hasn’t been an issue, but in the bathroom and kitchen we’d normally wear some slippers.
mortar · 1h ago
Ahh thanks that’s useful to me as all. As someone that grew up with carpet everywhere, it would be always shoes off by choice - But now we avoid carpet everywhere as my son has dust allergies of all things, and carpets are ridiculously hard to keep clean.
We are a mostly shoes off for ourselves, but do what you want for guests.
Living alone for the last 30 years, I gradually developed a strictly shoes-off household. I've found it's easier to organize my shoes if they're doffed in one place by the door, and as a renter, I prefer to keep a clean carpet, because landlords don't really clean them, they only replace them after disasters. So a tenant's carpet tends to just accumulate nasty stains until it's unusable.
However, my fiancée came in from Barcelona and she was appalled at my barefoot habits! She said it would never do at her home! She immediately found slippers for me to wear, and that was a lot of trouble, because I am not accustomed to wearing slippers and I tended to slip out of them at all times. But she owned a cat, and cats tend to leave little surprises on the floor for us to find with our feet. And I'm unsure whether that's why fiancée wanted to enforce slipper-wearing, but it sure was a big deal for her.
I wear them non-stop until I hit the shower - I only have one pair but my wife has exponentially more and cycles through her pairs constantly, with a ritual cleanse in the shower for each used pair at least once a week.