[enscr]

If you remove your shoes outside and walk barefoot, you're just sharing the sweat, dirt & germs of your foot with everyone else at home & guests. You'll probably take that to bed with you and sometimes sleep on it. If you must leave your shoes outside, wear an 'inside-only' slippers.

[silencio]

I take my shoes off right after I walk in the door of my apartment. It's not for cleanliness or anything as much as it is just I like fuzzy squishy slippers compared to whatever shoes I may have been wearing that day that need to be aired or dried out or whatever they need.

Barefoot or not your feet are dirty, the shoes are a different kind of dirty, and there's other stuff on the floor too (like in my instance, I really need to get a roomba because my cat sheds all over the place). So whatever.

I'm pretty amazed guests will take their shoes off because everyone that lives here does, like this is what happened when a whole bunch of people came over to my place after my wedding: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chix0r/13618218504/

[colin_jack]

You keep your socks on so that's not really an issue. I personally don't let anyone wear shoes in our house, I don't know what they've stepped on so I don't want them dragging anything over the floors and carpets.

[enscr]

Socks doesn't fix the problem completely. Unfortunately, visitors don't like being told that they can keep the socks on while walking on the carpet, but if they are to sit on the bed or put the feet up on the couch, they should take it off.

Don't even feel like discussing how clean are fresh are everyone's socks.

[colin_jack]

I wouldn't tell them to ever take their socks off, the only rule in our house is no shoes in the house.

Agree socks might not be 100% clean but you have to draw the line somewhere, and the bottom of a sock is bound to be cleaner than the bottom of a shoe.

[frik]

Just provide your guests slippers or house shoes.

In central Europe it's common to have a special room called checkroom/garderobe next to your main door where you store several pairs of guest slippers.