Slippers for guests: why are they prohibited by etiquette, but recommended by health care?

Slippers for guests are an invariable attribute of many homes. However, no fewer people oppose this tradition and are ready to defend their right to go barefoot at a party or wear street shoes. Oddly enough, each of these points of view has its pros and cons.

Etiquette rules: should guests be offered slippers?

Offering guests replacement shoes is a sign of bad manners. This is what etiquette experts say, arguing that a visit to someone else’s home is usually timed to coincide with special occasions. When going to a holiday, a person thinks through every element of his clothing, so it would be rude to force a woman to change her beautiful shoes to slippers, and they don’t go well with a man’s suit.

However, the same etiquette tells guests not to cause unnecessary inconvenience to the owners of the house. Therefore, in wet weather, when it is dirty outside, it is worth taking a spare pair of shoes with you. So you won’t have to take off your shoes, and your festive look won’t suffer.

Slippers for guests are a must-have

Etiquette is good, but the realities of our lives are such that we have to receive guests not only on holidays. Relatives come to chat over a cup of coffee, friends drop by to watch an interesting movie together, and sometimes there is a need to invite a doctor, electrician, plumber or electronics adjuster to your home.

Of course, it would be wrong to allow these people to walk around the apartment in street shoes. Not only dirt remains on the soles of sandals and boots, but also a huge amount of pathogenic bacteria, particles of feces with worm eggs, fungi and other microorganisms.

Things are worst in the following circumstances:

• There is a small child in the house. Crawling on the floor, he risks contracting a dangerous disease. Since the immunity of children is less stable compared to the immunity of adults, the likelihood of infection increases significantly.
• There is an animal in the house. A cat running on the floor and then licking its paws can also contract an infection. This is especially dangerous for those pets whose owners do not consider it necessary to vaccinate, motivating their decision by the fact that the animal does not go outside. The second side of this coin is no less frightening - after walking on a dirty floor, a cat can jump onto the bed or table, thus spreading pathogenic flora and facilitating infection of the owners.
• Floor coverings are difficult to clean. Removing germs and worm eggs from a shag carpet is not so easy, not to mention the fact that it can leave dirty stains.

What shoes to buy for guests?

If guests come to the house, there is nothing wrong with offering them slippers. However, these should not be the shoes of the owners themselves - trampled and with traces of wear. Each person has their own degree of disgust, but most will still find it unpleasant to put on someone else’s slippers. In addition, there is a risk of contracting fungus and other skin diseases.

The simplest solution in this situation is to buy several sets of disposable slippers.These are given out in hotels and beauty salons - they are inexpensive, so it will not be difficult to allocate money from the family budget to purchase them. Naturally, each guest should be given an unopened pair of slippers and not reuse them.

There are other options:

• For relatives or friends who often come to your house, you can buy ordinary slippers rather than disposable ones. They should all be different - so that it is easy to understand whose shoes are whose.
• It is not forbidden to ask frequent guests to leave their slippers in your house - such a decision will not affect the budget of the owners.

If the apartment has warm and clean floors, you can use socks instead of slippers. It is enough to buy the cheapest, but dense ones, do not remove the labels from them and, if necessary, offer them to guests. It is important to pay attention to the size - despite the fact that these products tend to stretch, a man with foot size 45 will find it difficult to squeeze into socks designed for a maximum of 36. Likewise, a woman with size 36 will not be very comfortable in socks that are designed for size 45.

What to do in difficult situations?

It happens that guests flatly refuse to take off their shoes. There can be many reasons for this behavior. For example, police and ambulance service employees are prohibited from taking off their shoes during working hours, so that they are able to leave the premises without delay at any time. The average person might be embarrassed by a hole in his sock or a stale pedicure. Be that as it may, this is not a reason not to let the guest go further than the threshold - just ask him to put on shoe covers. The cost of one pair of shoe covers in a pharmacy is from 5 to 10 rubles, so it’s worth stocking up on them in advance in case of need.

Summarizing what has been said, we can come to the conclusion that during formal receptions you should not offer guests slippers. In this case, you will have to remove all the carpeting to make it easier to treat the floor with disinfectants later. But in everyday life, it is still worth worrying about cleanliness and hygiene in your home, while at the same time not forgetting about the comfort of visitors. And the best solution would be disposable slippers for guests.