5 Benefits Of Wearing Japanese Style Room Shoes In Your Home

While the custom of no-shoes at home is often viewed as having Asian roots, it can also be found throughout the Middle East, Philippines, India, Africa, and other cultures. While this practice may have stemmed from floor-oriented dining or sleeping arrangements, many benefits come from the custom of switching out your outdoor footwear for Japanese-style room shoes. 

1.  Reduces the Germs in Your Household

If you are like most people, Covid-19 has made you more cognizant of the germs in your surroundings. While some germs are airborne, others can be brought in, or tracked in, from the outside. A University of Arizona study found nine different specifies of bacteria on a pair of shoes, and they found approximately 440,000 units of bacteria over two weeks. 

Did you know that fecal matter can be found on approximately 96 percent of all shoes? This includes both human and animal feces. When you wear your shoes into your home, you track these germs and fecal matter onto your floors, onto your recliners, and any other surface your shoes touch.

If you remove your shoes after you enter your home, you still run the risk of transferring the germs to your floor and then distributing them throughout your home when you walk through them. By taking your shoes off on your stoop or porch, you reduce the number of germs that enter.

2.  Reduces the Amount of Toxins in Your Home

Did you know that dangerous toxins exist in everyday products you walk across every day? For example, coal-tar-based sealants used on driveways, parking lots, and playgrounds, to protect the asphalt underneath contain extremely high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These are probable human carcinogens and can damage your DNA.

Failing to remove your shoes before entering your home tracks these dangerous toxins into your house. Which in turn could place your family at a higher risk of exposure. Changing into room shoes can also reduce the amount of pollen that is tracked into your home. This can help to reduce the allergens you and your family are exposed to.

3.  Keeps Your Children and Pets Safer

If you are like many adults, you probably do not spend a lot of time playing or sitting on your floors, but your pets and children do. By reducing the number of germs and toxins on your floors, you keep your children and pets safer. 

4.  Protects You and Your Family From Communicable Foot Diseases

There are several contagious skin diseases you and your family can be exposed to by walking barefooted in your home or yard. Some of these include fungal infections, ringworms, and athlete's foot. 

These can be avoided by having on some type of room shoes when you are in your home. Be careful about wearing your room shoes into your yard or garden, because you then run the same risks of your slippers tracking in the same type of elements your shoes would.

5.  Keeps Your Home Cleaner

When you wear your shoes in the house, you track in other things besides germs. Dirt, small pebbles, and other debris attach to the groves in the soles of your shoes. If it is raining, even more dirt attaches and when it combines with the wet elements outside you track in mud. Taking off your shoes at the door and changing into Japanese-style room shoes can keep you from tracking this dirt, mud, and debris into your home.

Less dirt and debris means less time vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping your floors. Fewer household chores mean more time you can spend with your friends and family.