Slippers for guests are an invariable attribute of many homes. However, no less than people oppose such a tradition and are ready to defend their right to go away barefoot or to stay in street shoes. Oddly enough, each of these points of view has its pros and cons.
Etiquette rules: should guests be offered slippers?
Offering guests replaceable shoes is a sign of bad taste. So say etiquette experts, arguing their opinion that a visit to a strange house, as a rule, is timed to coincide with solemn events. Going on a holiday, a man thinks over every element of his clothes, therefore it will be impolite to force a woman to change her beautiful shoes to slippers, and they are not very combined 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 on the street, it is worth taking an extra pair of shoes with you. And you don’t have to take off your shoes, and the festive image will not suffer.
Slippers for guests as a must-have
Etiquette is good, but the realities of our life are such that we have to receive guests not only on holidays. Relatives come to chat over a cup of coffee, friends look at the light to watch an interesting film together, and sometimes there is a need to invite a doctor, an electrician, a plumber or an electronics setup wizard to the house.
Of course, it will be wrong to allow these people to walk around the apartment in street shoes. On the sole of sandals and boots there is not only dirt, but also a huge number of pathogenic bacteria, particles of feces with worm eggs, fungi and other microorganisms.
The worst situation is in the following circumstances:
- The house has a small child. Crawling on the floor, he runs the risk of contracting a dangerous disease. Since the immunity of children is less stable compared with 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, is also able to catch 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 - walking on a dirty floor, a cat can jump onto a bed or a table, thus spreading pathogenic flora and contributing to the infection of the owners.
- Floor coverings are difficult to clean. Removing germs and worm eggs from a fleecy carpet is not so easy, not to mention the fact that dirty spots may remain on it.
What shoes to buy for guests?
If guests have come to the house, there is nothing wrong with offering them slippers. However, this should not be the shoes of the owners themselves - trampled and with traces of socks. Each person has his own degree of disgust, but most will still be unpleasant to wear other people'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 issued in hotels and beauty salons - they are inexpensive, so it will not be difficult to allocate money from the family budget for their purchase. 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 not disposable, but ordinary slippers. They should all be different - so that it is easy to understand where their shoes are.
- It is not forbidden to ask frequent guests to leave their slippers in your house - such a decision will not hit 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, do not remove the labels from them and, if necessary, offer the guests. It is important to pay attention to the size - despite the fact that these products tend to stretch, it will be difficult for a man with a 45th foot size to squeeze into socks designed for a maximum of 36th. Similarly, a woman with a 36th size will not be very comfortable in socks that are designed for owners of the 45th size.
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 officers are forbidden to take off their shoes during working hours - so that they can leave the premises without delay.An ordinary person may be embarrassed by a hole in his toe or a stale pedicure. Be that as it may, this is not a reason not to let the guest go beyond the threshold - just ask him to wear shoe covers. The cost of one pair of shoe covers in a pharmacy is from 5 to 10 rubles, so you should stock them in advance in case of need.
Summarizing what has been said, we can conclude that during solemn receptions it is not worth offering slippers to guests. In this case, you will have to remove all the carpeting - so that later it will be easier to treat the floor with disinfectants. But in everyday life, you still need to worry about the cleanliness and hygiene in your home, at the same time not forgetting about the comfort of visitors. And the best solution would be disposable slippers for guests.