Removing shoes when entering another's home in parts of North America...?

when did this start to become common, particularly with people of European descent? Somehow, I don%26#039;t picture this commonly having been practised among people of European descent prior to the 20th century...but perhaps I%26#039;m wrong. Did the era of wall-to-wall carpets have something to do with this etiquette, or was it something acquired from cultures where shoe removal is common? Did the 60s era have something to do with it? Thanks.

Removing shoes when entering another%26#039;s home in parts of North America...?
I think it started off being more popular in the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries. It does seem to be more popular to do it in other parts of Europe than in the UK. I still have loads of friends that insist on wearing their shoes in my apartment and give me funny looks if i ask them to take them off.





Most people in the UK do it now for practical reasons, ie not to damage or mess up the floors but I think in the other parts of Europe it started off more as a custom, like taking your coat off when you come indoors. Shoes are meant for outdoors. Allot of people like to leave them on purely for vanity reasons i think. Or they are scared their feet will smell up the persons house! lol
Reply:That is a good answer from Happy Hippie.





Here in the UK, removing shoes is not that common. However, I always ask people to remove their shoes when visiting my house. It really does make a difference to keeping homes clean. Report It

Reply:I have no clue. I know its in Asian culture. I never go to a few friends%26#039; house without removing my shoes first. But I always take off my shoes %26#039;cause I hate when the floor gets dirty! But I never thought of it before. Maybe wall-to-wall carpeting does have its effect.
Reply:I think in N America it%26#039;s mostly to keep the floors clean and not track in dirt.
Reply:I think once people started getting nicer floors it became common. In the olden days many had dirt floors or poor wooden floors - I think as homes became nicer it became customary to remove your shoes.
Reply:I can say this: in cold and snowy regions of North America, it is simply a practical matter. We lived in Alaska for quite some time, and between Oct and Mar, if you wear ANY shoes inside from out, you will leave muddy tracks, no matter where you were. So, you begin to get used to it. We never took off our shoes, until our first winter in AK, and we realized either take off the shoes, or spend the weekends steam cleaning the carpets. It just stuck after that and it DOES make the carpets stay cleaner longer.
Reply:In Europe it is only done by beastly little middle-class proles who don%26#039;t know any better. America probably the same.





In Middle Eastern countries it is the custom.
Reply:When people come to my house I request that they remove their shoes. In my house it evolved from having hard wood floors and light carpeting and a distaste for lugging the vacuum out. My family members don%26#039;t make people take off their shoes, so in my case it has nothing to do with the 60s era. I suppose everyone is different.
Reply:people don%26#039;t want dirt, mud, snow, wet prints, on their rug, and floors.
Reply:Well, it certainly is a cleaner practice. I%26#039;m an American with tile floors in a tropical climate, so I just sweep often. However, when traveling Northeastern Europe, all my friends, their families, and their friends all had cabinets in their entry halls with places to put shoes, and a cabinet full of slippers for their guests. From the way it was explained to me, the custom was adopted by many early northeastern Europeans through trade with Asia (mainly by the early Muscovites) and made a good deal of sense to a people living in a snowy climate.





I gotta tell ya, the homey, welcome feeling you get when you show up as a visitor to someone%26#039;s home and they present you with warm, comfy slippers as soon as you get in the door is unparalleled. I suspect that, to many of those people who have very strong hospitality traditions, that aspect of the tradition is as weighty as the floor-maintenance aspect.
Reply:When you spend good money on carpet or hardwood floors you don%26#039;t want anyone just tracing in there with a bunch of dirt on their shoes.



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