The offending shoe: 3rd go-round
In one of the previous shoe threads, this comment caught my eye:
Once you start thinking about it, it does become rather gross to sit on a pro-shoe carpet. Someone literally may have walked in dog urine, or bubble gum residue, or some homeless guy’s whatever not 5 minutes ago, and now you’re sitting in it, getting all that sticky goodness onto your hands.
Actually, once you start thinking about almost anything connected with hygiene you almost invariably wind up in deep, deep do-do (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).
I think the idea of this dog-poop-on-the-shoes discussion is that some people consider that shoes always are carriers of microscopic dog poop or the bacteria in the dog poop or whatever makes dog poop noxious. That is probably true, and it extends to human poop because not everyone has great hand-washing habits. So it also may be true of hands, doorknobs, seats, whatever we touch really.
I don’t think we’re talking about people stepping in a stinking pile of dog poop and then walking right into your living room and onto your rug (although I suppose that could happen, particularly with kids). I think what we’re talking about is the idea of shoe soles as inherently dog poopy, as constant vectors of dog poop and other nefarious but invisible dangers.
That gets us into the realm of OCD. Constant hand-washing and the like.
We are surrounded by gazillions of bacteria that live on and in us. Some are harmful and some are not. Walking outside in shoes and then walking inside in shoes does not ordinarily cause disease. Children sit on the floor all the time. There is evidence that exposing oneself to bacteria in moderation is a good thing for health.
And there are also common-sense ways to avoid getting sick from exposure to them under ordinary circumstances. Wash hands now and then, particularly after encountering someone with a cold, for example. If someone is known to have a serious contagious disease, quarantine. Otherwise, most people are perfectly fine with ordinary shoes in ordinary homes, doing ordinary things.
I don’t sit on the rug, either, although I know lots of people do (especially kids) and I certainly used to do it without any bad effects, in houses where people did not remove their shoes—and even owned dogs.
And don’t get me started on cats, who wade into cat litter and move it around with their little cat paws.
The rest is aesthetics. I choose to be kind to guests rather than having a clean clean spotless sparkling floor. Floors are meant to be walked on. Shoes protect feet, particular outside but also indoors (splinters, glass, or the feet of people like me with nerve damage). And I wouldn’t put a floor or rug in my home that is so delicate it can’t be walked on in shoes without damaging it.
Your mileage may differ.
[NOTE: Who knew that shoes in the house would turn out to be such a fertile topic?]
Yeah, I mean if your guests or whoever have been wearing their pants, dress etc all day who knows what the things they sat on ( trains, buses, offices, resteraunts) have on them so to be consistent shouldn’t they make their guests remove their pants also?
Of course that would make for a different kind of party.
And as to OCD I don’t know if I’m odd or not but the germs and hand washing thing are not me at all but what I need is order. Things on my desk and shelves must be orderly and in nice stacks but dust and and worrying about touching things escapes me.
I have reached my mid 70’s and I’m still alive so I don’t sweat the small stuff, I just do diligence when finishing bathroom stuff, wash my hands after shooting because of lead and stuff, I am at the gun range once and often twice each week. I do all of the cooking and we keep a clean kitchen and I am careful with raw meat products, which we eat a lot of, because we are old and don’t care.
We have our old Brittany dog Jessie and I keep her droppings picked up and don’t worry about stuff being tracked into the house because, we are old and don’t care.
One thing I never do it put my face close to a dog’s face because dogs have their muzzles into all sorts of sh*t and it drives me semi-crazy to see people kiss dogs and let them lick their faces because I am old and I do care about what dogs lick. When something kills me some day it will probably be my eggs and bacon for breakfast every day or my couple of Scotch whisky and meat every evening, we try to keep the carbs down, but once I made it into my 70’s I don’t worry about that stuff anymore. Not everything about being old is great but it helps to not care about the small stuff, shoes on, shoes off, I am old and don’t care.
“I’m old and don’t care.”
Most sensible thing I have read all day. Bravo!
Sounds like excellent advice (akin to “Don’t sweat the small stuff”…except that I’m never quite sure what “the small stuff” is, exactly).
Anyway, reminds one of the joke George Burns—he of the ubiquitous cigar—used to tell:
“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself….”
Griffin at 3:52 PM:
🙂
I will consider doing that at my next get-together.
Unfortunately, since most of my friends are “of a certain age,” it wouldn’t be the titillating funfest it might have been in earlier years.
I like NO SHOES in my house.
But this makes parties hard.
So I’ve adopted the steam clean after party policy – that night before bed.
Which means my house has to have tile… not carpet. Bedrooms can have carpet.
There aint no way I’m sitting on any carpet anywhere unless its my own in my bedroom.
As noted, there are practical things one can do to avoid exposure or at least minimize some environmental hazards, but obsessing about germs is not healthy. I too am of an age where I eat what I want and drink what I want. I enjoy my extended family, adore my grandchildren, and like being the favorite uncle of most of my neices and nephews. Life is good.
Two words. Dust mites.
I’m also of a certain age, and don’t care about small things like shoes on or off. However, there is (at least) one exception to this germ/dirt thingy. I’m a motorcycle rider, and long time ago I stopped riding in the rain or on freshly wet pavement. A buddy convinced me that all those roadkilled squirrels, racoons, deer, birds, etc turn into a decaying stew on the roads when it rains, and spray all over the cars and bikers. Not a big deal when you’re in a car–you simply run through a carwash every now and then. More of a big deal when it sprays all over a bike rider–especially if he rides without protective gear (helmet, jacket, gloves). I don’t need the motorcycle for transportation any more, so I can afford to be selective about when and where I ride.
Not sure how true that actually is, but the mental picture of being sprayed down with roadkill soup doesn’t appeal to me.
Waidmann
I appear to be the opposite of baklava: I frequently go barefoot outside, on the principle that my feet are pretty easy to clean compared to shoes. (I also go barefoot inside, but I imagine I’ve just ruled out ever being invited to baklava’s house…)
Waidmann, I learned not long ago that the dark blobs that decorate all urban sidewalks are discarded chewing gum. Somehow that grosses me out even more than the fact that (as previously stated) I walk around my backyard shoeless despite having a dog. (I don’t go barefoot in cities.)
Chewing Gum is repulsive, any where any how! Yes shoes for city streets and it creeps me out to see chewing gum under a table. When I was an employer I always asked folks to chew gum on their own time because in my old fashioned world it makes a person look kind dim, in the head, in public chewing gum. If I ever stepped on some bare footed then I would have to soak my feet in Lysol even though I am old and don’t care too much.
Everything cannot always be sterile, and that’s probably just as well. An overzealous fixation on cleanliness will cause more illnesses than you’re trying to prevent.
We humans EVOLVED in our dirty, filthy world, and we have evolved DEFENSES for the world. Our immune systems will protect us from many of these threats, if we let them. And excessive cleanliness is associated with the development of auto-immune diseases; if the immune system has nothing to do, it sometimes misbehaves.
The science fiction author L. Neil Smith has suggested that children raised in sterile space habitats and on other planets will never be able to come to Earth; sudden exposure to all of the Earthly allergens would kill them. We’ll need to take terrestrial dirt and germs with us, or our kids will never be able to come here.
Personally, I walk barefoot outside, and don’t bother to take my shoes off in the house. I roll around on the floor with the cats, and when I had a dog growing up, I rolled around on the floor with the dog. Food dropped on a tile floor is subject to the “5 second rule”. (Carpet is another story.) My attitude toward cleanliness has always been “close is good enough”.
Barry Meislin on July 22, 2019 at 4:30 pm said:
“Sounds like excellent advice (akin to “Don’t sweat the small stuff”…except that I’m never quite sure what “the small stuff” is, exactly).”
There was a book about that: “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff (And it’s ALL Small Stuff)”
Every time you take a chance with the “SMALL STUFF” and don’t die your won.
https://smile.amazon.com/Dont-Sweat-Small-Stuff-Its-ebook/dp/B000FC1VX8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1DLWB9HYSLJHD&keywords=don+t+sweat+the+small+stuff+and+it+s+all+small+stuff+book&qid=1563836164&s=gateway&sprefix=Don’t+Sweat+The+Small+Stuff+(And+it’s+ALL+Small+Stuff)%2Caps%2C1986&sr=8-1
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-exactly-how-often-cocaine-and-feces-show-up-on-your-dollar-bills-2017-07-11
“Hard currency is literally crawling with crap — as in, actual fecal matter, bacteria, pet DNA, and even cocaine — according to several studies that will make you go cashless if you haven’t already.”
I’m growing to love these shoe threads. They’re better than jello (only readers who’ve been here for a while will understand that last part).
Monty Meals:
Gives more meaning to the term “filthy lucre.”
I once grossed some people out by admitting that I washed my rugby boots in the kitchen sink. They thought that was disgusting.
Then my boss asked them where they washed their potatoes. They were quiet after that, but I could see that they still felt washing shoes in the sink was wrong.
Some dirt is apparently dirtier than other dirt.
Knew a couple of women who were naked lady strippers year ago, never wanted to pay to see them naked. The told me that the dollars put in their underwear spent just as well as any other dollars. They were also not good examples of mental or chemical health.
Well how about throwing some music into the mix?
“Diamonds on the soles of her shoes”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_T3XvzPaM
Little Feat (you know what’s comin’): https://youtu.be/6PSz6DzYfkA
Randy Newman “Y C L Y H O”, “Here, I’ll take your shoes . . . “: https://youtu.be/G55cJrUs9VM
I once saw a fascinating show about the human microbiome. That’s gut bacteria and so much more. The finale of the show was a bit about how babies born via C-section were being deprived of mom’s microbiome on their first day in the world.
Naturally, a few docs (in the show anyway) have gotten busy adding mom’s microbiome to these C-section babies. There wasn’t a great deal of scientific proof offered that it made a difference one way or the other, but I would not be surprised that “natural” was at least a little better.
A large fraction of people normally carry staph germs (staphylococcus aureus) around on their skin. Yet people are rarely are afflicted with that disease unless they are hospitalized. Can’t say I understand this, but suffice to say that it doesn’t pay to get excited by all this if your immune system is solid.
I don’t wear shoes in the house mostly for comfort, but certainly not on the basis of maintaining the house germ-free. I agree with Neo 100% on this. Our homes and our bodies are swimming in bacteria and other microbes. In fact, bacteria and other non-human cells make up 1-3 percent of our body mass!
Without offering any evidence, I am convinced that the increase in people with serious allergies in the last decades is due to children being raised in overly antiseptic environments. When I was a kid, we played outside, rolled in the grass, ate dirt, and generally shared our germs with every other kid in the neighborhood. We got exposed to a very wide spectrum of allergens and developed our resistance to them. I fear that the parents who think that they are just protecting their little darlings are doing them no favors.
Not a lot to add here so I’ll just chime in that I agree with Neo. I generally don’t wear shoes in my house, I do wear slippers in the winter but those never go outside. When I invite people over they are welcome to keep their shoes on, most are courteous enough to bring spares in the winter or when the weather is really bad. I can say with a very high degree of certainty that I’ve never become sick from something brought in on the soles of someone’s shoes, including mine. The only time my wife insists that I remove my shoes upon entering the house is when I’m wearing my work boots and doing stuff in the yard. Mud tends to get jammed in the treads and then falls out while I walk around the house leaving little clumps everywhere. Pretty reasonable request that I’m happy to abide.
Nancy Sinatra: “These Boo–”
nah, not gonna do it
The offended shoe: Blue Suede
I would remind everyone that poop is loaded with bacteria typically found in our (and our dogs’) gut microbiome. In many instances, it is the introduction of such bacteria, especially into babies and very young children, that build up a healthy microbiome and as a result, protect us from. among other things, food allergies, asthma, various forms of infectious disease (think C.Diff) and a wide variety of other conditions.
}}} There is evidence that exposing oneself to bacteria in moderation is a good thing for health.
Studies show that farm children are much much less likely to get allergies, exposed as they are from youth to adulthood to all kinds of alternative proteins.
Griffin on July 22, 2019 at 3:52 pm said:
Yeah, I mean if your guests or whoever have been wearing their pants, dress etc all day who knows what the things they sat on ( trains, buses, offices, resteraunts) have on them so to be consistent shouldn’t they make their guests remove their pants also?
* * *
https://.sfgate.com/restaurants/article/Dear-nudists-Please-cover-up-the-seat-at-least-2310817.php
A decidedly Coprophilic turn…
My wife is fond of pointing out that, by the time a child is two years old, they are expected to have eaten between one and two pounds of dirt.
And yes, this is part of what promotes a healthy immune system. You need to give it something to fight against.
Sorry, what was that about hygiene again?
If the people who demand that visitors to their homes remove their shoes for “hygienic” reasons *also* eat food prepared in restaurants, or worse (*), order pizza delivered, then they are really not all that concerned with hygiene.
(*) I have worked in pizza shops; believe me, I *know* what I’m talking about.
My same friend who is apparently no longer speaking to me because Trump is horrified by people sitting on the bed in their clothes. She honestly can’t believe that anyone would think it’s OK to be out and about in the world and then come home and sit on the bed BEFORE changing out of those nasty exposed-to-the-world clothes. She made sure there was a wooden bench in their bedroom and woe be to her husband if he didn’t use that to sit and change out of his clothes instead of sitting on the edge of the bed!
My point above is two-part:
1) All the “Employees must wash hands before returning to work” signs in the world do not, of themselves, wash anyone’s hands;
2) To cut labor costs, pizza chains which deliver generally have fewer “insiders” than they frequently need, and so they require the drivers, when they are in the shop, to pick up the slack. So, these guys (and a few gals), who are out-and-about — handling money, smoking, dipping tobacco, etc, and rarely actually washing their hands in between these actions — are *touching* the food.