Reply to Why don’t Americans take shoes off inside the house?

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Why don’t Americans take shoes off inside the house?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am Asian American and grew up without shoes inside the house and assumed this was the norm. My husband is American and is used to a no shoes household, but he’s not as fastidious as I am about it - if he needs to pop back into the house to get something he will leave shoes on. I don’t make a big deal about it.

His parents however, wear shoes inside all the time, unless it’s something like rain boots or snow boots. Otherwise they’ll put on sneakers or dress shoes, go about their business outside, and keep them on when they return. This includes wearing outside shoes in their bedroom and bathroom, not taking them off until bedtime.

I find this very puzzling as they are very neat and hygiene minded people. They live in a beautiful, expensive house, they pay for weekly cleaning and specifically ask the cleaners to mop all the floors, and they are generally pretty paranoid about things like germs. So how come they don’t mind all the gunk that’s on the bottom of their shoes? They live in a very urban part of DC so it’s not like they only go out to drive , and use public transportation, too.

Is this common among Americans ? If it’s relevant they are in their early 60s.  Every time they visit and wear shoes inside our house I am so uncomfortable but I don’t want to be rude and repeatedly ask/remind them. [/quote]

Do you have guest slippers? Maybe that would remind them.

If they do any walking on sidewalks outside, I agree, it’s gross to be trampling around on the house with shoes. Also weird. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics