WHEN CIVILITY and common purpose reign in a society, there is little it can’t withstand with dignity. Modern life need not be rude, chaotic and ugly. Michael Wines writes in The New York Times on daily conditions in the shelters for those made homeless by the Japanese tsunami:

Just two weeks after this nation’s greatest catastrophe in decades, the citizens at Takada Junior High School No. 1, this town’s largest evacuee center, have managed to fashion a microcosm of the spotlessly organized and efficient Japan they so recently knew.

Theirs is a city where a hand sanitizer sits on every table; where face masks, which Japanese wear the way other people wear sunglasses, are dispensed by the box. It is a place where you do not just trade your muddy shoes for slippers at the front door, but also shed the slippers at the gymnasium door lest you carry a mote of dust from the hallways into the living areas….

… Drying remains a problem. “We have to dry the ladies’ underwear where people can’t see it. So we put it in two classrooms on the second floor, and then we lock the doors,” said Mr. Nakai, the evacuee center manager. Classes at the school have been suspended since the disaster. 

                                          — Comments —

Hurricane Betsy writes:

While I am much impressed with the way they are handling the smaller details of their homelessness in Japan, I would like to take this opportunity to put in a bad word for their cult of shoelessness, or at least its generally foolish infusion into North American society. It is common sense that if it’s raining, or there’s snow or mud on the ground, I will of course remove my boots or shoes without being asked. But if in midsummer – when all is dry and clean and I haven’t just been cleaning the barn – I am asked by the people I am visiting to walk around in my bare feet or socks because their normal common sense has been ravaged by a love affair with their stupid flooring, I feel resentful. This is not our culture! If you wouldn’t ask Queen Elizabeth to take her shoes off, don’t ask me.

Quite often visitors to my home (not my blood relatives – they know better) will start shedding their shoes when there is no reason to do so, and I tell them that this ain’t that kind of house. This isn’t Japan. And after some laughter it turns out they are grateful for it.

And I thank you, Laura, for letting me have my say, because you’ve just been introduced to My Pet Peeve of All Time.

Bob writes:

I like the idea of taking your shoes off when you enter someone’s home. I think it’s respectful and, in a way, civil. My wife always takes a pair of light slippers with her if we are visiting for some time and also has ankle socks at our home available for visitors who don’t want to walk about in bare feet. I wouldn’t think of entering someone’s home without taking off my shoes and would feel uncomfortable even if they said it was ok. We have English relatives who never take off their shoes when entering a home and we asked them if they wouldn’t mind taking off their shoes in our house. They complied but perhaps secretly thought we were odd. That’s okay.

Mrs. Hurricane replies:

I cordially ask Bob, why do you ask your guests to remove their shoes? Just curious. You mention respect and civility, but I would suggest that you can’t imbue adults with these qualities by forcing “manners” on to them that usually have no practical basis (such as the shoes being muddy or wet). Thanks.

PS. Would you ask the Queen or any member of the royal family, or the President, to do this, also? Here in Canada, they would on royal visits have the Queen and/or her Duke visit ordinary citizens’ homes. I do know that the old wench took her shoes off to visit a mosque, which may or may not be apropos of nothing.

D. from Seattle writes:

Hurricane Betsy writes: “…I am asked by the people I am visiting to walk around in my bare feet or socks because their normal common sense has been ravaged by a love affair with their stupid flooring, I feel resentful.” 

As someone who takes shoes off in the house (my own and others’ when asked — I am not going to take my shoes off if there’s ten other people with shoes on, I’m not that crazy), I ask Betsy: why should I be more in a love affair with your stupid shoes that with my stupid flooring? I live in my house all the time and I get to decide how much dirt and wear and tear I want to tolerate, and if you’re visiting my house you should conform to my standards, no? You said you feel resentful; why should I care how you feel? (You being the prototypical visitor to my house, not you Betsy.) I decide to take shoes off based on reason (dirt), not based on feelings. 

Re: the President, I wouldn’t want him visiting my house, so there would be no need to ask him and his staff and security detail to do so. Problem solved.

Bob responds to Mrs. Hurricane:

We don’t ask guests to remove their shoes – everybody does it automatically in this part of Canada. Service people are scrupulous about it. Our English relatives got the idea when my wife handed her brother a pair of slippers! We wouldn’t dream of embarrassing a stranger by insisting they remove their shoes. That would be ” bad form.” As for Her Majesty, I’d probably say ” Ma’am, imagine you are visiting a mosque!” :-)

Mari writes:

I agree with D. from Seattle.

If one does not like to take off one’s shoes as a visitor when asked, then one should consider:

1)Would I be willing to vacuum before I leave?
2)If a frequent visitor, would I be willing to help with expenses to replace the carpet when it becomes worn?
3)Would I be willing to help with wear and tear and upkeep if floors are wood etc?

I  grew up in the East you see, and yes as a rule, we always take off our shoes. Where I grew up it was usually hot most of the year. But the dust and dirt still cling to shoes and sandals. And bacteria and germs cannot be seen by the naked eye. In America,I sometimes visit homes where I am asked to take off my shoes and sometimes told I don’t need to. I  do what the host says regarding this matter. Most people I know do so as well .

One time I visited the home of some people who requested that since their floors have just been done (wood flooring), that people kindly take off their shoes.  (For those who say “This is not our culture” I understand, but, I would like to mention these people were Caucasian Americans. Previously they did not mind the shoe- in- the- house business, but the wood floors did cost some hard earned money. They are retired and  I think they chose  to do something nice for themselves after all those years of working and saving.  They were so proud of the beauty  of the floor too and I rejoiced with them. They were the nicest people I ever met .

I think it would be better to think in terms of how one should act as a guest or visitor in another’s home.

Mrs. Nelson writes:

I’m chiming in on the “remove your shoes” discussion. My family lives in Chicago and we routinely remove our shoes when entering someone’s home and we prefer if visitors remove their shoes when visiting our home. This is not done in deference to another culture, rather it is done for hygienic reasons. I and most of my friends have little children that crawl and some older toddlers may put their hands in their mouth without washing them. In a large city, the streets, sidewalks, buses, trains, etc. are filthy. Not oh-that-is-dirty filthy but you-will-catch-diseases-haven’t-been-cleaned-since-???-thousands-of-hands-(and worse)-have-touched-it filthy.

I would never ask a visitor to remove their shoes (I feel that would be rude) but we have all of our shoes lined up on a couple of matching cotton bathmats in the “mudroom” (our front entryway) and a small fabric bag of clean socks hanging on a coat peg right at eye level. This allows me to keep my floors clean in a city where many dog owners do not pick up their pet waste. Also, the average square footage of a city home is much smaller than a typical suburban home and most homemakers here are very concerned about tracking muck into the kitchen where food is prepared.

Only the upper-upper-middle class bordering on wealthy travel everywhere in their own car (an outdoor parking spot costs $200 per month to rent in my neighborhood) or have large homes or “cleaning ladies.” Additionally, there are many Third World immigrants that bring Third World disease, poor people that cannot afford to treat their illnesses, and addicts and mentally ill people that will not treat their illnesses. All of these people ride on the same buses/trains, go to the same libraries, and unfortunately sometimes use public areas as toilets.

Homemakers are required to be committed to old fashioned scrub-the-floors disinfection for the safety of their family. (We are also the “crazy” Mommies who teach our children to wash their hands often and use a paper towel to turn off the faucet, then open the door in public bathrooms with their elbow.) I have noticed family members in the suburbs do not have to adhere to what I call “Victorian” cleaning standards.

Mrs. Hurricane writes:

To D from Seattle:

Well, let’s take the opposite scenario then: suppose you are giving a dinner party and some ladies are wearing $900 Manolo Blahniks/Jimmy Choos when they show up at your door…are you going to tell them to take them off? Ha ha ha! That’s the end of those friendships! Better yet, suppose one of those women is your boss’s wife? Why do you think people, particularly women, spend hundreds or thousands on gorgeous shoes? So they can pad around on someone’s fool carpet like peasants when they visit? What if some men are wearing $3,000 suits; they are going to look and feel like effete fools in their socks.

And don’t you wriggle out of this one by telling me that you don’t know any people who can afford these kinds of shoes; or that you don’t have a boss with a wife, if any boss at all. What about really old people, for whom it may be difficult to remove and replace footwear? Just out of curiosity, what sort of floor do you have?

It is understood by me that if the shoes are seriously wet or dirty, then you should make sure you take them off! But if they are just a bit wet, well, that’s why I have a mat at the door. How can you tell I’m from the farm?

What do your guests do exactly, that your floor would suffer wear and tear from a little visit at your home? Suppose there’s a staple or a wee shard of glass lost in your carpet and your guest gets blood poisoning because of your odd predilection for looking at socks or toes?

I would not have believed this if I had not seen it: Years ago I visited a home (inhabited by a regular family) and their living room carpet was covered by a giant sheet of plastic. I guess that it ‘s not only shoes that cause problems, it’s sweaty feet and socks, too. – : )  Maybe I’ll just stay home from now on. We’s jes’ folks where I come from.

N.W. writes:

Good Lord, what a bunch of uptight germaphobes! Mrs. Hurricane Betsy seems to be the only one with any practical sense in the whole lot. It is funny that this discussion appeared on your blog today because earlier this afternoon I was assisting a friend backfilling a rather large mudhole which has replaced a tree in his yard that fell a couple years back. Most times, nobody removes their shoes at my friend’s house, but given the extreme amount of mud involved, we all took off our shoes today.

In my own humble experience, I have found that people who insist on a hardline course of shoe removal at the doorstep under all occasions are usually a bunch of uptight holier-than-thou busybodies whom it is best to avoid. What cracks me up is when such individuals complain (usually after mass) that people just don’t spontaneously drop by and say hello anymore. Ha, go figure.

D. from Seattle writes:

Hurricane Betsy wrote:”Well, let’s take the opposite scenario then: suppose you are giving a dinner party and some ladies are wearing $900 Manolo Blahniks/Jimmy Choos when they show up at your door…are you going to tell them to take them off? [D: if they are friends, yes of course I would, and they would have already known that they are expected to take shoes off. But if I were in a social circle high and wealthy enough to give formal dinner parties, I’d have a commercial-grade floor (stone/tile) in my reception area that my cleaning lady would scrub to keep it at my expected level of cleanliness. That way I could keep the parties formal enough with shoes on.] Ha ha ha! That’s the end of those friendships! [D: ha ha ha, no it isn’t. If your friendship ends because someone had to take shoes off, it wasn’t much of a friendship to begin with.] Better yet, suppose one of those women is your boss’s wife? Why do you think people, particularly women, spend hundreds or thousands on gorgeous shoes? So they can pad around on someone’s fool carpet like peasants when they visit? What if some men are wearing $3,000 suits; they are going to look and feel like effete fools in their socks. [D: see my first reply.] And don’t you wriggle out of this one by telling me that you don’t know any people who can afford these kinds of shoes; or that you don’t have a boss with a wife, if any boss at all. [I know people who can afford these kinds of shoes, but they don’t mind taking them off; I guess they are not as stuck up as you imagine those people to be. And I don’t have a boss.] What about really old people, for whom it may be difficult to remove and replace footwear? [D: How old is really old? My parents are in their late seventies and they have no problem removing shoes in the house.] Just out of curiosity, what sort of floor do you have? [D: hardwood and area rugs throughout, tile in bathrooms.]

Mrs. P. writes:

I have the perfect solution for you germaphobes who want to remain gracious hosts and yet keep your floors impeccably clean and germ-free. Have a supply of disposable shoe booties (shoe covers) at hand to give to your guests as they arrive at your door. By all means, do your very best to get these booties in colors that complement your décor. As finicky as you folks seem to be, you are bound otherwise to go to pieces in front of your guests if there is a clash. These booties could serve as a kind of party favor, too, that your guests take home with them to fondly remember you by.

I do not ask my guests to remove their shoes when they arrive unless they are children. With 16 grandchildren I have learned that children’s feet naturally navigate toward the gross and the ugly such as wads of chewing gum, unidentifiable sticky substances, soiled wrappers of all kinds, and dog doo-doo. There could be a pile of dog doo-doo in a yard a block away and, if I am not careful, some child will drag it in on their shoes and distribute it throughout my house.

I, myself, was beginning to feel sorry for the “Hurricane” lady here. It did seem she was being pounced upon. But then with a name like Hurricane Betsy and judging from the other comments she has written in the past, I decided she could hold her own just fine against a hundredfold if it came to that.

David Lee Mundy writes:

We felt the same way as Betsy before moving to Korea. Here, as in Japan, removing shoes is as much a matter of practicality as it is of courtesy. Outside the house it is quite dirty even in the urban
centers. For instance, we routinely see men urinating on the side of the road. Plus, this month marks the start of the yellow dust and pollution storms from China..

We spend most our time on the floor. We sit on the floor. We eat on tables barely raised off the floor. We sleep on mats on the floor. Our heating comes from the floor. Would the Queen Mother be asked to remove her footware? That’s akin to asking where the 3,000 pound bear sits. Still, some Americans here insist on wearing shoes inside because it is the American thing to do. But I would be happy to send a picture of the street outside our house as proof against such foolishness.

Mary writes:

My husband is from Korea, so we remove shoes in our home. This is done simply for the purposes of cleanliness. It’s not about subjecting one’s flooring to undue wear and tear. In Korea, many activities of daily life–like eating, sleeping–still occur on the floor. Many people utilize western furniture, but not everybody.

Additionally, homes are heated through the floor and it’s quite comfortable. 

But think about when you walk outside—sidewalks and roads are filthy, though they may look “clean” to the naked eye. These are places where animals have urinated, where people have expectorated, any number of things. Do you really want to track that into your home? In addition, you have the run-of-the-mill dirt that you track in. Typically, a Korean home or apartment will have a recessed entry where one removes shoes and dons house slippers, then you step up into the living area. 

But at the end of the day, it’s just a cleanliness issue. I find that I prefer it, but I would never force a guest to do so. I don’t feel as if I am kowtowing to another culture because I agree with the reasoning behind it.

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