Take off your shoes to limit bugs at home

The practice of removing shoes while entering a house is pretty common. Well, it makes sense not to bring in dust and mud into a sparklingly clean house. But it turns out avoiding soiling an already clean house may not be all that matters when you enter the house shoeless. You may be unknowingly keeping serious bugs out of your house by simply getting everyone to leave their shoes outside.

Scientists have recently tried to work out whether our shoes carry disease causing organisms. They collected samples from soles of shoes in several households. And what were the findings? The soles of shoes tested positive for several dangerous organisms. The number of organisms found were three times more than those found on bathroom and kitchen surfaces! And those organisms may have been around for years.

What this all means is that whenever you enter a house with your shoes, you are bringing in all the stuff that you stepped on during the day. Not just the stuff that you can see, but all those other micro-organisms that your naked eye would never see. And you don’t really want any potential disease-causing organisms lurking in the corners of your house.

Wiping your feet on a mat will not do. You’ll just get rid of the surface debris that you can see, the bacteria will still stay put. You might even pick up more organisms inadvertently, likely left behind by whoever wiped their shoes on the mat before you came in. You may also worry that bare feet, or smelly socks, may bring in organisms of their own. Whilst that argument holds some ground, it appears the inside of a shoe harbours far less bacteria compared to the outside.

But why all the fuss about shoes and bacteria? The ordinary healthy person is unlikely to get ill from pathogens brought in with shoes. But you may be housing some vulnerable people in your house who can easily fall sick after a seemingly minor exposure to external organisms. We are talking of the elderly, children and others who may already be suffering from chronic conditions. It therefore makes sense to limit the number of bugs making it into your house, all dragged along by shoes traversing everywhere and anywhere.

But don’t get too excited and immediately start having a panic whenever a shoe makes its way into your house. All you need is an awareness that even seemingly clean shoes can harbour unseen and deadly bugs. Have a reasonable approach about shoes and your house. Some may feel uncomfortable taking off their shoes whenever they visit, find a sensitive way of handling them. Even though the likelihood of disease directly related to shoes in the house is rare, a shoeless approach makes reasonable sense.