Prior to where I live now, I never really thought much about taking my shoes on or off whenever I’d get home. I would obviously adhere to a no-shoes on the furniture or on the bed rule, but would still walk throughout the apartment in shoes.
Now that I’m in a different place with a different layout, it actually makes it so much easier to walk in, take my shoes off by the door, and then go about my home without shoes. And I’ve never looked back.
But which side of the debate do you fall under? A recent onion piece published in the Wall Street Journal seems to have started the debate all over again, with its title, “Here’s Why I’ll Be Keeping My Shoes On In Your Shoeless Home.” This author offers a different take, stating that apart from religious or cultural reasons, asking guests to go shoeless in your home is insulting and unnecessary.
While the author points out that such requests come from overbearing people and a little dirt never did any harm, the piece ended up getting a response. A group of researchers decided to counter her argument, explaining that the author is, in fact, wrong.
In an article for The Conversation, environmental chemists explained it in very simple terms: “It is best to leave your filth outside the door.”
The researchers are part of DustSafe, which is a scientific collaboration across the UK, US, and Australia to analyze samples of household dust collected by people spanning a decade. The results were surprising. It wasn’t just E. coli poop particles you’re potentially tracking into your home. There are also radioactive elements, toxic metals, and drug-resistant pathogens potentially getting tracked into a home on the bottoms of shoes. Gross!
You might think that regularly cleaning your floors solves the problem, but it doesn’t. These particles can get kicked up into the air by the movement of people or pets walking through a space. And where do those particles go once they’re airborne? Right into your lungs.
So, the message is quite clear, as they wrote, “We all know prevention is far better than treatment and taking shoes off at the door is a basic and easy prevention activity for many of us.”
If you’re someone who doesn’t like to go around the house barefoot or in slippers, then there is a simple solution for that: Get a comfortable pair of shoes that you wear indoors, and indoors only. They never leave the home and your problem is solved.