Wipe Down Wednesday – your shoes, that is.

Does your home have a shoes off at the door policy?  Do you have small, crawling-age children in your home or over to visit often?  Do you like to sit on the floor like I do?

Take a moment and think about all the places you’ve walked today.  I went to the pet store (needed a new litter scoop), the grocery store (needed more produce to make our super smoothies), storytime at the local library, then a playdate where we walked about a two miles on residential streets and dirt trail.  Oh, and then I went jogging at the track at our neighborhood junior high.  All in all, an average day.  Just off the top of my head I can think that my shoes were exposed to a variety of different animal poop, all sorts of different little bugs that I unknowingly squashed, LOTS and LOTS of chemicals from leaky cars on the residential roads and parking lots, chemicals used to clean the library carpets, pet and grocery store floors.

Sofia, at greater than 2.5 years old is still putting her fingers in her mouth – a lot.  We like to play on the floor and we’re pretty strict about shoes off when you get inside the house.  Everyone knows that I love my vacuum cleaner and yet when I steam cleaned a couple weekends ago that water was dirty – not black, but definitely dirty.

My point is:  if you want to decrease the amount of pollution exposure to you and your family take your shoes off at the door. 

This brings up another topic:  doormats.  They’re not just for decoration, ya know.  They come in a variety of textures but here’s some helpful information:  The bristly doormats are great for dislodging the big stuff, rocks, mud, debris that gets caught in the soles of your shoes and such.  It’s those smoother, and what I used to think, completely worthless doormats that are equally if not more important (if you had to choose just one).  The really low pile or nearly smooth doormats (similar to what you would find in the entrance to the mall or grocery store) are super effective in getting all those chemicals off.  Assuming you take the time to wipe your feet.

In an ideal world you would have a three-step entry process.  First, the bristly doormat to get the big stuff off, then the shorter/smoother mat for the chemically, liquidy, smaller stuff THEN you would take your shoes off and go ahead on into the house.

Sounds like quite a process, doesn’t it.  It does to me too.  The condo that we’re renting does have a very small tiled foyer and we’ve placed a small bench to prop feet on to take shoes on and off and we have the bristly mat outside the front door.  I think the smoother mat is key though and would like to have one just inside the door.  Shoe storage can be a challenge.  We’ve got racks on the floor and hanging racks in the coat closet.  We’re just throwing Sofia’s shoes into a cardboard box for now.  There are lots of ways to get creative with shoes storage.  A friend of ours even has a shoe rack of slippers for guests to wear while visiting – so thoughtful!   As we plan and get ready to start building our home we took a lot of time considering and planning the entry way to make it easy to follow and enforce the shoes off philosophy.

There’s all sorts of other ways you can bring pollutants into your home:  on your jacket/coat, the grocery bag you set on the ground to lock your car door or open the security gate to your building, or simply opening a window in your home to name a few.  Taking your shoes off at the entrance to your home (whether inside or outside) can be an easy lifestyle change with significant benefits.  But it is a lifestyle change, I’ve met quite a few people who wouldn’t think of takeing their shoes off inside their home and are really uncomfortable with the idea – hence calling this shoes-off policy a lifestyle change.  Give a try – your family will be healthier for it.

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• Wipe Down Wednesday. (pickahling.wordpress.com)

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