I recently read, yet again, an argument for taking off your shoes at home. Apparently, Americans are the only people in the world for whom this is not an absolute rule in every house. The people commenting on how gross it is to wear shoes in your house focused exclusively on dirt and germs. “My house is so much cleaner.” “I’m sick less often.” The only exceptions were for the elderly and disabled, for whom walking barefoot may be painful or dangerous. For everyone else, it was downright disrespectful and disgusting to leave their shoes on.

Commenters said guests could bring a second pair of shoes with them on visits, and referred to Mr. Rogers’ famous habit of changing shoes during his opening song. They said they offered their guests socks or booties (those plastic shoe coverings painters sometimes wear.) They said they would go so far as to not allow someone to stay in their home if the person did not remove their shoes. “My house; my rules.”

To that last part – fair enough. You can run your house however you want to, and guests are free to take it or leave it. However, all our choices have consequences and the consequences of asking unsuspecting and noncompliant guests to alter their outfit before entering your home may result in having fewer guests to boss around altogether. Which may suit you just fine.

In case you haven’t guessed by now, I am a proponent FOR wearing shoes in homes. Especially other people’s homes. Here’s why:

1. You don’t know what’s on other people’s floors. Especially if they’ve got kids or animals, particularly dogs who go in and out all day. Do they wipe their dog’s paws whenever it comes inside? Doubt it. Dogs step in way more poop, decaying animals and plants, and whatever else, than most humans do. The only thing I want my feet touching when I’m at someone else’s house is the inside of my shoe. And if I have to use the bathroom at someone’s house, I really do not want my bare feet touching the floor around the toilet. There’s feces and urine on the ground. It’s a guarantee. A truth. It just is. So now those particles are on the bottoms of my feet, instead of on the bottoms of my shoes. Still getting tracked around your house. Just now they’re on me.
2. Unless you sweep eight times a day, there’s crumbs on your floor. There’s also fingernail clippings, fur, hairballs, dead spiders, live cockroaches, boogers, sloughed off skin cells, and all sorts of other things that make a crunchy or squishy sound when you step on them and get stuck to your feet. I’d rather my guests step on them in their shoes, where they will probably go unnoticed, than in their socks or bare feet, where they will definitely be able to formulate an idea of the last time I mopped.
3. People’s feet are gross. Look, we all know that if a lady is wearing a baseball cap, it’s probably because she’s hiding her greasy hair, right? So if someone is wearing close-toed shoes, why would you insist they take them off? What if they’re hiding yellow toenails, or fungus, or cracked heels? If you make someone take off their shoes, and they are more of a shoes-on person, you risk embarrassing them and possibly having to smell a cottage-cheese funk all through your non-cottage-cheese brunch.
4. Guests should get to choose what they wear. If you’ve invited someone to your house, yes of course you should get to say that they can’t smoke inside, or tell racist jokes, or rearrange your bookshelf. But I’m drawing the line at they do get to wear whatever they want. It can piss you off or offend you or gross you out, and you can choose to not invite them over ever again, but if you’ve already invited them and they’re already there, just suck it up and let them wear what they want. Your son’s new girlfriend is wearing a bikini top to the dinner table? Let her. Your uncle is wearing a MAGA hat? Let him. Your uncouth American guests are wearing their shit-covered cowboy boots? Let them. You can mop after they’re gone. Shoes are just as much a part of an outfit as anything else and sometimes it’s just not really practical to remove them. A long dress that grazes the floor with four-inch heels is going to puddle and get dirty once the wearer is flat-footed. Sometimes I wear the ugliest, stupidest socks with my boots because they’re the only ones that won’t give me blisters, but I’d be mortified if I had to reveal them and walk around in my blue jean skirt and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle socks all night.
5. Most people won’t die from exposure to germs and dirt. Germs and microscopic filth are just a part of being an organic creature living on a planet with other organic creatures. However you think we got here, we weren’t put here with the promise of living pristine lives. We eat, we shit, we die, we decay. And in between, we roll around with other creatures who are all doing the same thing. Besides, our shoes are not the only items that carry germs and dirt into our homes. Our clothes, our hair, our bags, our skin, our pets, our cell phones, our car keys, our water bottles, literally EVERYTHING that leaves the house and then returns brings in the funk of the outside world. Is your sofa covered in plastic? Do you sanitize your phone every day? Do you wash your hands every time you touch a shared surface? Yeah, probably not. (If you do, you have OCD and need help.) So please STFU about shoes, as if you’ve discovered the sole (see what I did there?) cause for all the cold viruses floating around your house.

Okay, I think I’ve made my case. If you’re in the opposing camp, feel free to comment below with why shoe removal should be mandatory. But you better give me more than “germs and dirt.” 🙂