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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: I find that odd
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Gracious rebel
Rainbow warrior
# 3523
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
It's also because the floor is a major workspace where people chop veggies (on a board of course), lay out fabric for cutting, and so forth. Wearing dirty shoes on it would be rather likedoing the same on your kitchen counter.
You chop vegetables on the floor?! That's a new one on me.
(Cutting out fabric I can understand, most homes don't have a table big enough!)
Many people here now ask if they should remove shoes when entering someone's home. But its potentially embarrassing arriving at a house with someone else who volunteers to remove shoes, if you weren't expecting that, as you may have smelly feet or holey socks!
[ 15. January 2014, 07:52: Message edited by: Gracious rebel ]
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Fancy a break beside the sea in Suffolk? Visit my website
Posts: 4413 | From: Suffolk UK | Registered: Nov 2002
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lily pad
Shipmate
# 11456
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Posted
Growing up, we mostly wore our shoes in the house but always took them off at our friends' places. Nowadays, I would never expect to keep my shoes on. No one seems to wear their shoes in the house. If it is dry out, I will sometimes ask to keep my shoes, especially if I am wearing sandals. In sandal season, I generally carry a little pair of socks in my purse to wear when in someone's house. It still unnerves me to have people take their sandals off and walk in bare feet in my house. Not sure why, just not what I am used to. No one else seems to mind. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Sloppiness is not caring. Fussiness is caring about the wrong things. With thanks to Adeodatus!
Posts: 2468 | From: Truly Canadian | Registered: May 2006
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I notice that the workmen today have kept footwear on, but have laid cloth over the laminate where they are working.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Despite the fact that photographs exist of both the late Princess of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge wearing them, even wearing a baseball cap the right way round makes a person look like a prat.
Maybe that's true in Britain, where baseball is less popular.
I'm not a hat person at all, but I can see why some people might wear a baseball hat to protect their eyes from the sun. (Me, I just wear sunglasses.)
As for the shoes thing, I've always worn shoes indoors. We did growing up - having the good sense to wipe your feet and be sure there's nothing you'd be tracking in, of course. We also went without shoes indoors. I tended to wear mine until I was going to bed, or until I wanted to lie down on the couch or something. Nowadays, I wear clogs indoors. I'm not supposed to go barefoot with all the foot problems I have (or so says the doctor). Maybe it's not true for the majority of people, but many of us need our shoes for support and balance! Although if I go into someone's house who feels strongly about it (or for cultural reasons, like my professor and his Japanese family), I will take my shoes off - I just won't stand for extended periods of time.
[forgot to add:]
My two grandmothers were quite different on the shoes thing. One grandmother had white carpeting; she insisted we all take our shoes off when we came in. The other grandma - well, she was married to a farmer who went barefoot outside (even in the fields, plowing in the dirt, etc.), so she bought dark brown carpets for her house, because, she said, it matched the dirt!
[ 18. January 2014, 19:56: Message edited by: churchgeek ]
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
You would need to survey all hat-wearing classes - old ladies, cowboys, truck drivers or whatever - to ascertain whether the crucial factors were nationality, age, gender or something else.
Age. It's a generational thing. In the 1960s, in the Camelot days when our President had that fabulous head of Kennedy hair, hats (for men) went out of fashion. We had a whole generation of boys that grew up without them.
This first came up in church about 20 years ago when the youngsters started wearing baseball caps for more than just sporting events. Because their parents grew up not wearing hats, they were never exposed to the "rules" about when you
shouldn't wear a hat. The older folks were aghast when all these teens started wearing baseball caps to church... at least in California.
I am a native Californian and when I was converted into the Roman Catholic faith in my late forties, I once wore my LA Dodgers cap to mass, almost: the associate priest (age 35) removed it personally and handed it to me! I never wear a cap on church grounds and always leave my switched-off cell phone in the car 14 years later! I think people whose phones go off at mass should be excommunicated.
![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
I'm afraid that I have an urge when I come across someone with a baseball cap on 'backwards' to ask them 'Where do you buy those caps with the peak at the back?'
A curious thing: paying, say, for petrol at a country town where I'm unlikely ever to pass again, and the cashier ends up with 'See you later'. I feel like replying 'No, you won't.'
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Pulsator Organorum Ineptus
Shipmate
# 2515
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Posted
I'd have been given a good hiding if I had taken my shoes off in somebody else's house when I was a kid. It would have been considered extremely ill-mannered. The only exception was if you were in wellies.
My parents weren't at all pleased when I started wandering around our house in socks in my teens but they tolerated it.
Let's face it: in the 60's in Britain we had a bath once a week whether we needed it or not, and nobody possessed more than four pairs of socks, two to last the week whilst the other two were in the wash.
Posts: 695 | From: Bronteland | Registered: Mar 2002
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
I'd have been given a good hiding if I had taken my shoes off in somebody else's house when I was a kid. It would have been considered extremely ill-mannered. The only exception was if you were in wellies.
My parents weren't at all pleased when I started wandering around our house in socks in my teens but they tolerated it.
Let's face it: in the 60's in Britain we had a bath once a week whether we needed it or not, and nobody possessed more than four pairs of socks, two to last the week whilst the other two were in the wash.
Whyever would keeping carpets clean be considered rude? ![[Confused]](confused.gif) That's why I take my shoes off inside houses. It's rude to track dirt all over people's nice carpets.
Why would your parents object to you wearing your socks in the house? Were socks only for special occasions? It is not good for feet to be in shoes all the time.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Pulsator Organorum Ineptus
Shipmate
# 2515
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
I'd have been given a good hiding if I had taken my shoes off in somebody else's house when I was a kid. It would have been considered extremely ill-mannered. The only exception was if you were in wellies.
My parents weren't at all pleased when I started wandering around our house in socks in my teens but they tolerated it.
Let's face it: in the 60's in Britain we had a bath once a week whether we needed it or not, and nobody possessed more than four pairs of socks, two to last the week whilst the other two were in the wash.
Whyever would keeping carpets clean be considered rude? That's why I take my shoes off inside houses. It's rude to track dirt all over people's nice carpets.
Why would your parents object to you wearing your socks in the house? Were socks only for special occasions? It is not good for feet to be in shoes all the time.
Because that's how it was among working class people in East Lancs in the 1950's and 60's. My parents weren't being eccentric - they were doing what everybody else did and no doubt what their parents and grandparents had done before them. You would no more take off your shoes in someone else's house than take off your trousers.
There was no question of dirtying carpets: shoes were wiped on at least two doormats, and woe betide the child who was insufficiently fastidious in this respect! Shoes had leather soles and heels, so wiping on a doormat was an effective way of removing dirt.
In the 1950's and early 60's people didn't have nice carpets. They had a patterned carpet square of a dark brown colour. It was rolled up at frequent intervals and taken outside for a good beating and rotated by ninety degrees when put back down so as to even out the wear.
The streets were probably cleaner in those days, too. Women mopped the stone flags outside their house every week (or merely swept if the weather was inclement). I can remember my grandmother keeping watch for a dog that had taken to "cocking its leg" on her section of pavement and chasing it off with the sweeping brush. Your shoes didn't get that dirty just walking on the town's pavements. You would be in bother if you arrived home with muddy shoes.
Posts: 695 | From: Bronteland | Registered: Mar 2002
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Barefoot Friar
Ship's Shoeless Brother
# 13100
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Posted
Down here in the American South, we're proud of our shoes. We have so few of 'em, we want to show 'em off when we have comp'ney. So we put 'em on when we're expectin' folks. And often if we get surprise visitors we'll excuse ourselves briefly and go put on a pair.
Makes it seem more formal, like.
As far as wearing baseball caps, well it's kind of a thing around here. We like the ones with our favorite hunting camo or gun logos, as well as the ones for our favorite college football teams (Roll Tide, buddy!). Those are probably the two most common. It's rare to see one that's an actual baseball team, unless it's a kid playin' little league. We wear 'em indoors and out, except there are quite a few of us who are smart enough to take 'em off at church or during a prayer.
Oh, forgot to add: The accessory du-jure for men is a Mtn Dew bottle. It will either have the soft drink in it, or else will be a spit bottle for chewin' tobacco or (for those who think tobacco use is a sin) sunflower seeds. But no self-respectin' Southern man is far from one.
[ 20. January 2014, 00:59: Message edited by: Barefoot Friar ]
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Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. -- Desmond Tutu
Posts: 1621 | From: Warrior Mountains | Registered: Oct 2007
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crunt
Shipmate
# 1321
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Posted
I live on the equator now (well, a few degres above), and shoes off is universal when entering other people's homes. Previously I was in the far east, and again it was shoes off at home. We often took our shoes off and wore slippers at work, at church and in certain shops (restaurants, photographic studios, fabric and bedding stores for example). However, there were signs on buses exhorting passengers NOT to take off their shoes.
In my home country (NZ) it is usual to take off your shoes in rural homes, but not so much in urban ones. Culturally, of course, practices vary among different groups.
One of the things I like about shoes off inside (apart from the comfort) is knowing who is at home, or who else has dropped by when you arrive at someone's house. In NZ, you can tell by cars in the drive, but in Korea you could tell by the shoes in the porch.
I find it odd when I'm watching movies / TV shows and people are sitting on beds or with their feet up on sofas and they're still wearing shoes.
[edited for grammar]
[ 20. January 2014, 01:15: Message edited by: crunt ]
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QUIZ: Bible
QUIZ: world religions
LTL Discussion
languagespider.com
Posts: 269 | From: Up country in the middle of Malaysia | Registered: Sep 2001
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
I'd have been given a good hiding if I had taken my shoes off in somebody else's house when I was a kid. It would have been considered extremely ill-mannered. The only exception was if you were in wellies.
My parents weren't at all pleased when I started wandering around our house in socks in my teens but they tolerated it.
Let's face it: in the 60's in Britain we had a bath once a week whether we needed it or not, and nobody possessed more than four pairs of socks, two to last the week whilst the other two were in the wash.
Whyever would keeping carpets clean be considered rude? That's why I take my shoes off inside houses. It's rude to track dirt all over people's nice carpets.
Why would your parents object to you wearing your socks in the house? Were socks only for special occasions? It is not good for feet to be in shoes all the time.
Because that's how it was among working class people in East Lancs in the 1950's and 60's. My parents weren't being eccentric - they were doing what everybody else did and no doubt what their parents and grandparents had done before them. You would no more take off your shoes in someone else's house than take off your trousers.
There was no question of dirtying carpets: shoes were wiped on at least two doormats, and woe betide the child who was insufficiently fastidious in this respect! Shoes had leather soles and heels, so wiping on a doormat was an effective way of removing dirt.
This chimes with my experience too, which was well into the 1970s and 80s. Wearing just socks around the house was not allowed because it was the days before central heating and fitted carpets: houses were draughty and cold, and not wearing shoes or slippers was a fast track to chilblains. Kids nowadays don't even know what chilblains are!
Besides, little girls wore white socks, which would become incredibly grubby very fast if worn without shoes and never wash pure white again. It was a shameful thing, to have to wear grubby grey socks to school.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
I'd have been given a good hiding if I had taken my shoes off in somebody else's house when I was a kid. It would have been considered extremely ill-mannered. The only exception was if you were in wellies.
My parents weren't at all pleased when I started wandering around our house in socks in my teens but they tolerated it.
Let's face it: in the 60's in Britain we had a bath once a week whether we needed it or not, and nobody possessed more than four pairs of socks, two to last the week whilst the other two were in the wash.
Whyever would keeping carpets clean be considered rude? That's why I take my shoes off inside houses. It's rude to track dirt all over people's nice carpets.
Why would your parents object to you wearing your socks in the house? Were socks only for special occasions? It is not good for feet to be in shoes all the time.
Because that's how it was among working class people in East Lancs in the 1950's and 60's. My parents weren't being eccentric - they were doing what everybody else did and no doubt what their parents and grandparents had done before them. You would no more take off your shoes in someone else's house than take off your trousers.
There was no question of dirtying carpets: shoes were wiped on at least two doormats, and woe betide the child who was insufficiently fastidious in this respect! Shoes had leather soles and heels, so wiping on a doormat was an effective way of removing dirt.
In the 1950's and early 60's people didn't have nice carpets. They had a patterned carpet square of a dark brown colour. It was rolled up at frequent intervals and taken outside for a good beating and rotated by ninety degrees when put back down so as to even out the wear.
The streets were probably cleaner in those days, too. Women mopped the stone flags outside their house every week (or merely swept if the weather was inclement). I can remember my grandmother keeping watch for a dog that had taken to "cocking its leg" on her section of pavement and chasing it off with the sweeping brush. Your shoes didn't get that dirty just walking on the town's pavements. You would be in bother if you arrived home with muddy shoes.
It's probably true that the streets were cleaner then - I think keeping shoes on indoors is probably pretty unhygienic now.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus:
I'd have been given a good hiding if I had taken my shoes off in somebody else's house when I was a kid. It would have been considered extremely ill-mannered. The only exception was if you were in wellies.
My parents weren't at all pleased when I started wandering around our house in socks in my teens but they tolerated it.
Let's face it: in the 60's in Britain we had a bath once a week whether we needed it or not, and nobody possessed more than four pairs of socks, two to last the week whilst the other two were in the wash.
Whyever would keeping carpets clean be considered rude? That's why I take my shoes off inside houses. It's rude to track dirt all over people's nice carpets.
Why would your parents object to you wearing your socks in the house? Were socks only for special occasions? It is not good for feet to be in shoes all the time.
Because that's how it was among working class people in East Lancs in the 1950's and 60's. My parents weren't being eccentric - they were doing what everybody else did and no doubt what their parents and grandparents had done before them. You would no more take off your shoes in someone else's house than take off your trousers.
There was no question of dirtying carpets: shoes were wiped on at least two doormats, and woe betide the child who was insufficiently fastidious in this respect! Shoes had leather soles and heels, so wiping on a doormat was an effective way of removing dirt.
This chimes with my experience too, which was well into the 1970s and 80s. Wearing just socks around the house was not allowed because it was the days before central heating and fitted carpets: houses were draughty and cold, and not wearing shoes or slippers was a fast track to chilblains. Kids nowadays don't even know what chilblains are!
Besides, little girls wore white socks, which would become incredibly grubby very fast if worn without shoes and never wash pure white again. It was a shameful thing, to have to wear grubby grey socks to school.
Feet should be barefoot as much as possible when not outside, but I guess people didn't know that then, and houses were too cold for it. What did people have as flooring if not carpet though?
The only houses without fitted carpets that I've been in have had very expensive wooden floors or laminate flooring.
Were white socks part of all school uniforms for girls?
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
In answer to what if not carpeting: bare floors, tiled floors, linoleum and scatter rugs.
We took off boots at the door, and immediately put on slippers which had been left there when we booted up to go out.
Shoes would be worn in the house at other seasons, unless Mother yelled at you to put on slippers as she had just washed and waxed the floors, or linoleum.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Were white socks part of all school uniforms for girls?
They were quite common - it was certainly the case at the schools I went to.
I used to change into slippers when I got home. It's all very well saying everyone should be barefoot as often as possible, it was considered a dirty habit to wander round without your shoes on a floor that people had trodden on. You could pick up any number of germs, and there could be splinters or something.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
Yes, always wore white socks to school, up to about 13 or 14 when tights started to be seen (at some stage I remember a fashion for wearing knee length white socks over tights).
It would never occur to me even now to take my shoes off when entering someone's house unless they asked me to, there was a cultural norm I knew about or my shoes were particularly muddy.
Jade, I remember being told at school in the '60's and '70's that we shouldn't wear shoes all the time. Didn't make any difference - no-one takes any notice of things schoolteachers tell you, surely?*
M.
Edited to add: except to pass exams, of course.
[ 20. January 2014, 06:43: Message edited by: M. ]
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
What did people have as flooring if not carpet though?
There speaks a voice unfamiliar with the cold kiss of lino on bare feet as you scampered from your warm bed on a winter's morning through the house to the one source of heat - the newly lit fire in the kitchen. You needed shoes on at a fairly early stage - otherwise how were you going to get down the yard to the outside privy?
I remember our first carpet (2nd hand). We raced around on it in our socks until we got shouted at.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Feet should be barefoot as much as possible when not outside, but I guess people didn't know that then, and houses were too cold for it.
You really don't know what chilblains are, do you?
quote:
What did people have as flooring if not carpet though? The only houses without fitted carpets that I've been in have had very expensive wooden floors or laminate flooring.
We had carpets, but they were not fitted. They went to about a foot from the wall, and the gap thereafter was linoleum or floorboards. Plenty of room for draughts to whistle under the skirting boards.
Key to this is the invention of the vacuum cleaner. Before it came along (and became affordable), carpets had to be removable so they could be beaten outside. Only once hoovers became efficient and commonplace could you have fitted carpets.
Now, of course, fitted carpets are 'common', and the rich - who can afford to heat their utterly sealed and draught-proof houses - have reverted to more 'authentic' wooden floorboards. quote:
Were white socks part of all school uniforms for girls?
Not just school uniforms. It was the only colour of sock available to little girls, as I recall.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I grew up in South Africa - us children went barefoot all the time. Except at school, it was a school rule that you had to wear lace up shoes. As soon as we got out of the school gates we tied the laces together and slung the hated shoes round our necks.
I find that among our friends some expect shoes off indoors and some don't mind, so I adjust accordingly. All my family (except me) expect shoes off and have shoe racks by their front doors. I always take slippers to my brother's house as his floors are cold.
We have wooden floors and a dog so it would be unkind to ask folk to remove their shoes!
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
I am interested as to when tights for little girls became normal. Thick cotton tights were what girls wore most of the time when I was small, along with white ankle socks with or without a lace frill and gingham that matches their school dress.
Oh and I wore those long patterned white socks sometimes but now they're really uncommon.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I am interested as to when tights for little girls became normal. Thick cotton tights were what girls wore most of the time when I was small, along with white ankle socks with or without a lace frill and gingham that matches their school dress.
Oh and I wore those long patterned white socks sometimes but now they're really uncommon.
We wore tights in the winter and socks in the summer, up to the early 1980s. The socks were almost always the knee-length variety, although I recall occasional white ankle socks.
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
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Rowen
Shipmate
# 1194
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Posted
Remote rural Australia. No central heating. Wood, Lino carpets.... Not just my house, but in genial. In winter 2.c inside at night.
No one really cares what we do with our feet, as long as we stay warm, and wet, muddy farm boots stay outside. Shoes, bare feet, socks. Whatever is fine.
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"May I live this day… compassionate of heart" (John O’Donoghue)...
Posts: 4897 | From: Somewhere cold in Victoria, Australia | Registered: Aug 2001
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
My childhood bedroom, in the 70s, was bare floorboards, if you walked in bare foot you risked getting splinters! I didn't have a fitted carpet until the early 80s. Shoes were always worn in the house, slippers when in night clothes. And my bedroom was freezing, with no radiator or heater.
I wore white knee high socks until my teens, my old fashioned parents insisted.
I had a South African friend who was always dropping her toddler off at the child minders with no shoes, which was rather frustrating for the minder as she had to pick other children up from school later.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Re chilblains, I grew up in my great-grandmother's house in the 90s and there was no central heating, but a gas fire in the front room. I was always warned about getting chilblains but never got them so never got to find out what they were ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Even though they must be quite unhygienic, I am in the first house I've been in for a while that has a carpeted bathroom and it is much nicer on cold mornings. The tiled kitchen floor is freezing. I naturally tend to go barefoot (just because I prefer it) but regret it when I have to enter the kitchen....
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
We had carpets, but they were not fitted. They went to about a foot from the wall, and the gap thereafter was linoleum or floorboards. Plenty of room for draughts to whistle under the skirting boards.
My childhood home was like that when we moved in - square carpets in the centre of the room, and a foot of bare boards around the outside. This outermost foot of boards was stained with a dark wood stain, but the bit under the carpet was natural.
The stairs carpet was a runner up the centre of the stairs, and was held into the risers with carpet rods.
Fitting wall-to-wall carpets was the second thing we did (after installing central heating).
(Jade: My current bathroom has a tile floor with electric underfloor heating on a timer. I'm not going back to unheated bathroom floors.)
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Underfloor heating in the bathroom sounds blissful. Alas, it's a student house so I can't change anything like that.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
The streets were cleaner? The streets were cleaner! I remember walking home from the library, reading, and I had to look up at frequent intervals to check for dog droppings to make sure I avoided them. The brown sort and the white sort, in those days. Not to mention the old men's spit. I grew up believing that when those who were used to doing that had passed on, the habit would have gone... We had a few years.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
In the house I lived in as a kid we sometimes had ice forming inside in winter. Shoelessness was discouraged.
Though I went barefoot at home as much as possible. And later in my teens twenties and thirties as well. Can't really nowadays because the flat I live in now, though warmer, isn't that warm (boiler is crap and I need a new one but cant really afford it) has no fitted carpets (cos I hate them and I pulled them up and threw them away) and most of the floor is old and grotty floorboards, and some of it is bare concrete.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
We had carpets, but they were not fitted. They went to about a foot from the wall, and the gap thereafter was linoleum or floorboards. Plenty of room for draughts to whistle under the skirting boards.
We had all the gap at one side of the living room, the rest, about two and a half feet wide, was linoleum. We grew up as kids with this arrangement. Mum used to tell us off for sliding on the lino in our socks, but did we listen?
I find it odd these days when people have a "front room." A room with the best furniture in that was not lived in. That is despite growing up with this arrangement.
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Last ever sig ...
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
When I lived in the maisonette with one living room, which was my working room, and into which any visitors came directly from the stairs, I felt the need of such a room, which would be tidy.
I haven't managed to get my new living room quite as tidy as a front room, despite having a study, and a sewing room.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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cattyish
Wuss in Boots
# 7829
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Posted
So, in Australia, I can stamp on the crawling things? I feel so much better about going back there.
Mr C has never understood removing shoes in the house. He also doesn't understand cleaning up after himself. Added to the fact that our dog is now quite an old lady, I have to Insist that guests keep their shoes on. It makes my ladies' group members (English, Korean, Norwegian and Scottish) pretty confused.
When I was visiting Australia I was repeatedly surprised by my hosts' generosity. I didn't know what to give them in return. I came home with beautiful things made for me by lovely people and felt I should be giving them some sort of Scottish items. What's the protocol there?
Cattyish, enquiring.
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...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Posts: 1794 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jul 2004
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A.Pilgrim
Shipmate
# 15044
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Posted
I'm a shoes-on-indoors person, myself. Unless I've been outside and got them unexpectedly dirty, or if I want to put my feet up on the sofa. Otherwise I feel incompletely dressed - not quite as bad as if I wasn't wearing any trousers, but the same sort of uncomfortable 'not ready for action' feeling. I think I feel a sense of not being in secure connection with the ground if I'm wearing just socks (or slippers, which I absolutely loathe and therefore never ever wear.)
Occasionally I visit people whose practice is to remove outdoor footwear, some don't bother to ask guests, some make polite hints, and I do understand if people have got expensive, easily spoiled carpets (e.g. deep pile cream-coloured) that politeness requires the removal of footwear. But for my own place I'd much prefer tough, hardwearing carpet that takes all the punishment that can be thrown at it - after all, a floor is for walking on, so why put something delicate on the floor that you will damage if you walk on it when fully dressed?.
And I never feel at home in 'shoes-off' houses - I'm always a bit wary that I'm going to spoil something by being there. I usually feel much more at home in a mate's workshop or garage, or shed, and you don't take your shoes off to go in any of those, do you?
Angus
Posts: 434 | From: UK | Registered: Aug 2009
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
I'm a shoes-on-indoors person, myself. Unless I've been outside and got them unexpectedly dirty, or if I want to put my feet up on the sofa. Otherwise I feel incompletely dressed - not quite as bad as if I wasn't wearing any trousers, but the same sort of uncomfortable 'not ready for action' feeling. I think I feel a sense of not being in secure connection with the ground if I'm wearing just socks (or slippers, which I absolutely loathe and therefore never ever wear.)
Occasionally I visit people whose practice is to remove outdoor footwear, some don't bother to ask guests, some make polite hints, and I do understand if people have got expensive, easily spoiled carpets (e.g. deep pile cream-coloured) that politeness requires the removal of footwear. But for my own place I'd much prefer tough, hardwearing carpet that takes all the punishment that can be thrown at it - after all, a floor is for walking on, so why put something delicate on the floor that you will damage if you walk on it when fully dressed?.
And I never feel at home in 'shoes-off' houses - I'm always a bit wary that I'm going to spoil something by being there. I usually feel much more at home in a mate's workshop or garage, or shed, and you don't take your shoes off to go in any of those, do you?
Angus
Ahh but soft, plush carpets feel so nice underfoot if you are barefoot or even just in socks. I find wearing shoes all the time to be uncomfortable though.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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comet
Snowball in Hell
# 10353
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
I do understand if people have got expensive, easily spoiled carpets (e.g. deep pile cream-coloured) that politeness requires the removal of footwear. But for my own place I'd much prefer tough, hardwearing carpet that takes all the punishment that can be thrown at it - after all, a floor is for walking on, so why put something delicate on the floor that you will damage if you walk on it when fully dressed?.
something to keep in mind if you ever visit here (or similar places) is that while the practicality of it may have been the reason this custom came about, taking shoes off isn't just about cleanliness at this point - it's about respect.
Lots of rural AK homes are far from "delicate". most people would say something like "sturdy" and "practical" instead. But wearing your shoes in the house here denotes a sort of looking down on those who live there. like you said above, you'd wear your shoes in the garage or shed... and the implication is that you think that person's house is lowly or filthy. So if you're over this way, assume shoes off unless you're told different, or you risk insult.
also, on that note - don't refuse offered food. small amounts is good, but you try everything. otherwise you insult the cook. allergies are a legit out, though. or alcoholism if you're refusing a drink.
since the shoe tangent is determined not to die, I have to ask for you indoor shoe wearers - what about babies? they crawl all over and stick everything in their mouths. surely you don't think wiping your shoes is clean enough when there's a baby scooting by on the floor?
PS - as for splinters - surely you sand your floors, if not finish them?
[ 21. January 2014, 01:58: Message edited by: comet ]
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Evil Dragon Lady, Breaker of Men's Constitutions
"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.” -Calvin
Posts: 17024 | From: halfway between Seduction and Peril | Registered: Sep 2005
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
I work in a church which is cruciform and has the sanctuary in the crossing. There are choir aisles that lead into the "quire" (as we spell it for some reason), and since people can access the chancel and sanctuary from there, as well as the organ console, we generally keep it roped off. Also, there are curtains we usually keep open at the head of each choir aisle.
Here's what I find odd: how many people open the sanctuary gates (or worse, step over them or the altar rail), climb over the rope, or, when we have the curtains closed, walk right through.
What could possibly indicate that one should stay out of an area more than closing a gate, roping it off, and/or closing a curtain? If they think they can just ignore those barriers, what do they expect us to do if we want them to stay out of a certain space?
I'm sure they just don't care, and think they can do as they please because they're clever enough to think of transgressing a boundary (why doesn't everyone think of it?). I not only find it odd, I get really irked by that behavior.
ETA: Related - people who stand in a doorway, completely blocking it, either to look into a space they (think they) can't enter, or to have a conversation.
[ 21. January 2014, 06:44: Message edited by: churchgeek ]
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by comet:
quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
I do understand if people have got expensive, easily spoiled carpets (e.g. deep pile cream-coloured) that politeness requires the removal of footwear. But for my own place I'd much prefer tough, hardwearing carpet that takes all the punishment that can be thrown at it - after all, a floor is for walking on, so why put something delicate on the floor that you will damage if you walk on it when fully dressed?.
something to keep in mind if you ever visit here (or similar places) is that while the practicality of it may have been the reason this custom came about, taking shoes off isn't just about cleanliness at this point - it's about respect.
Lots of rural AK homes are far from "delicate". most people would say something like "sturdy" and "practical" instead. But wearing your shoes in the house here denotes a sort of looking down on those who live there. like you said above, you'd wear your shoes in the garage or shed... and the implication is that you think that person's house is lowly or filthy. So if you're over this way, assume shoes off unless you're told different, or you risk insult.
also, on that note - don't refuse offered food. small amounts is good, but you try everything. otherwise you insult the cook. allergies are a legit out, though. or alcoholism if you're refusing a drink.
since the shoe tangent is determined not to die, I have to ask for you indoor shoe wearers - what about babies? they crawl all over and stick everything in their mouths. surely you don't think wiping your shoes is clean enough when there's a baby scooting by on the floor?
PS - as for splinters - surely you sand your floors, if not finish them?
My parent's council house had bare floorboards upstairs, presumably sanded when fitted but the occasional splinter still happened. No other finish to them. This was in the 70s and we were quite poor.
My two children survived the floors without any problems despite the wearing of shoes (and one of them was a bottom shuffler who didn't walk for 18 months).
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I'm a shoes off sort of person myself, for my own home and when visiting. My best friend and most frequent visitor shares Angus' uncomfortable feeling of not being ready for action if shoeless. I have bought a pair of moccasins with outdoorsy sort of soles for him to wear in the house. Obviously this solution doesn't work with casual visitors, but I can't quite visualise what they might need to be ready for. I have very effective door locks. Intruding burglars are unlikely.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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A.Pilgrim
Shipmate
# 15044
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by comet:
... So if you're over this way, assume shoes off unless you're told different, or you risk insult.
also, on that note - don't refuse offered food. small amounts is good, but you try everything. otherwise you insult the cook. allergies are a legit out, though. or alcoholism if you're refusing a drink.
I am so utterly relieved that I live in a society in which not being hungry is a perfectly acceptable reason for refusing food, and I don't have to get involved in the emotionally manipulative minefield of 'I've offered you this food, and if you don't want it, it must be because there's something wrong with it, so I'm going to get the hump'. Why on earth should I be coerced into to eating something I don't want? Surely politeness requires the avoidance of such coercion?
I much prefer the honest, open, unmanipulative transaction of 'Would you like something to eat?' 'No thanks, I'm not hungry.' 'OK, that's fine'
Angus
Posts: 434 | From: UK | Registered: Aug 2009
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Politeness requires you to conform to local custom so as not to upset your hosts unnecessarily, surely?
We have slippers to wear in the house. Most guests take their shoes off at the door - it seems to be a Yorkshire thing but very practical if you have small children. I don't like to walk about in the house barefoot, but my youngest sister (only four years younger than me) is quite happy to. I suspect this has something to do with the date when my parents bought bedroom carpets; I remember having lino in my bedroom when I was very small.
<tangent> The scene in Ring 2 where the heroine comes into the hotel, hears the small child crying in his room (eek! Emergency! Is he being attacked by a Thing?) and PAUSES TO CHANGE INTO INDOOR SLIPPERS before running upstairs always makes me smile. <\tangent>
I don't remember pavements being any cleaner when I was a child either. As Penny S says, it was before dog owners were expected to clean up after their pets so as well as all the usual fag ends and sweet wrappers you had to dodge the dogshit. There wasn't so much debris from fast food meals, though.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
I much prefer the honest, open, unmanipulative transaction of 'Would you like something to eat?'
Or as we say in Scotland: You'll have had your tea.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Firenze: quote:
Or as we say in Scotland: You'll have had your tea.
Now that's manipulative in the other direction ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
For those of you who offer slippers to your guests, are they brand new slippers for each person who walks into your house? Or are people forced to wear slippers that have been worn by someone else? How do you know sizes?
I like to wear my own shoes -- they fit me, they're comfortable, they are chosen to match what I'm wearing. (Sometimes my skirt or slacks are too long to wear with flats -- if I were forced to wear slippers I'd trip over the hems.)
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
I don't *expect* people to take their shoes off at the door. I wouldn't even raise my eyebrows at them if they didn't. All I am saying is that where I live, people usually remove their shoes in the hall if visiting someone else and wander around in their stockinged feet for the duration of their stay.
Weekend guests (by definition, Not From Around Here) sometimes bring their own slippers with them, but if they don't I am happy for them to keep their shoes on provided they haven't stepped in anything disgusting recently.
Taking shoes off at the door might be something people do when they have small children; most of the locals who visit our house have children the same age as ours.
If you lived somewhere like Japan, a good host might provide slippers for guests. Of course, a good guest would bring his or her own... ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
I don't remember pavements being any cleaner when I was a child either. As Penny S says, it was before dog owners were expected to clean up after their pets so as well as all the usual fag ends and sweet wrappers you had to dodge the dogshit. There wasn't so much debris from fast food meals, though.
Now that's something you don't see anymore, white dog poo. Mess that had been lying there it had turned white. Cleaning doggy doos from your shoes was once a common thing to do.
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Last ever sig ...
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Without going too far off in a tangent, I think that it was a dietary difference involved in poo colour, not length of lying there. And in Victorian times, the white sort, called "pure" was collected for use in, I think, fulling of cloth.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
If anyone wishes to pursue that particular tangent, they are best advised to do so offline. They may wish to read "Mayhew's London", a quite detailed Victorian social history which has, among other things, an entire chapter on the "pure" collectors (who used their bare hands, by the way).
We now return you to your thread.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
We had stone flags on the floor - one old rectory those stone flags were recycled tombstones, with observable inscriptions, and quarry tiles. Bare feet not recommended.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Pulsator Organorum Ineptus
Shipmate
# 2515
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Posted
As I recall, there were three levels of luxury when it came to the area around the carpet square. The lowest level was bare boards, usually stained where they were exposed. The next level was lino. The third level was to lay some cheap carpet around the edge of the room.
Why didn't my parents want me wandering around the house in socks? Because:
1. they probably smelled given 1960's standards of hygeine,
2. you didn't want other people seeing the holes and/or darning in them,
3. it wore them out too fast,
4. they were underwear, and it wasn't the done thing to show that.
Hell, my dad not only didn't take his shoes off when he came home from work, he sat in his suit until it was time to go to bed. I can't remember getting changed when I got home from school; I probably kept my school uniform on until bedtime, tie and all!
Posts: 695 | From: Bronteland | Registered: Mar 2002
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
We had one set of underwear - we were sewn into it in September an' that were that until May...
That said, the conditions I grew up with were chillier and more comfortless than today. You had less choice of clothes, they were harder to launder (remember wringers? And pulleys? And woollens drying in layers of newspaper under the hearth rug?) and doubling up underwear and nightwear was not unknown.
My mother remembered when her house upgraded to the luxury of a cement floor (instead of beaten earth). Even then, the demarcation between indoors and outdoors was not that marked.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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