It’s official, I’m never wearing shoes in the house again. Do you wear yours in the house? With the exception of soaking wet snow boots or muddy sneakers, we walk right in with them.
But unfortunately for us, we’ve been bringing in millions of disgusting germs and viruses in our house this entire time.
Why Wearing Shoes In The House Is Completely Disgusting
UA professors recently conducted an experiment to see exactly what is happening on the bottom of our shoes and the results were super gross. Within two weeks, a brand new pair of shoes had 440,000 units of bacteria attached to the soles.
They found nine species of bacteria and found that viruses are thriving better on shoe soles than toilet seats.
And it isn’t just any bacteria and virus. One of the many things found on shoes was Clostridium Difficile Infection, which you probably know as C. Diff. It’s a painful illness that causes, diarrhea, fever and vomiting. It can be fatal at times.
Last year I got a horrific and pretty rare sickness called Astrovirus that we had no clue where I had gotten it from. Could it have been my sneakers I wore into my child’s elementary school, the grocery store, public restrooms…? Maybe.
OK, my shoes are gross, but does it even matter?
Well, the researchers looked to see if the bacteria from your shoes actually went anywhere else. Was it transferred all over your house, your kitchen floor, your living room rug, your kids bedroom carpet? Yes.
Their findings showed 90 percent of the time, the bacteria on your shoe was directly transferred right onto the floor.
Can’t I just wash my dirty shoes?
Totally. They experimented in washing shoes with just cold water and laundry detergent and saw a 99 percent decrease in bacteria. So yeah, you can wash them, but you’d need to do that daily if not more, to keep all the germs out of your house.
An easy solution is to just kick your shoes off at the door.
It’s not really that hard. Just take your shoes off. Maybe even leave some slippers right by the front door if you don’t like to go barefoot. I saw a super cute idea where a family used a magazine rack to keep all their shoes together at the front door!
And of course, whatever you do, keep those hands washed constatly.
PS: Here are 8 quick ways to get your dirty shoes looking like new again.
Liz is a just a mom trying to keep it real about how little she sleeps, how often she gets puked on and how much she loves them. You can find her here every day writing about real-mom moments.
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