This thread is reborn...
No shoes in the house. I usually politely request that guests remove their shoes.
As others have pointed out, I don't want dirt, dog poo, mud, bacteria, germs, etc. to be planted on my floor for me to walk on if I'm barefoot.
I just think about how disgusting public bathroom floors are. You walk through that with your shoes (unless you're Britney), and then if you go home and don't take your shoes off, you drag that disgustingness all through your house.
As Abstract pointed out in his OP, I think there is some truth to it being a Canadian thing- my Canadian friends just know to take their shoes off. I usually have to ask my American friends (unless they notice others taking their shoes off first).
This thread is actually quite timely for me:
I just had a problem with someone not taking her shoes off when she came over, and she even used one of our bathrooms and walked all over the bathroom rugs with her shoes (when I went in there, I could see the shoe prints). I couldn't say anything to that person....... because that person is my visiting mother-in-law. I sure as hell told my wife though. The funny/weird/annoying part is that she stayed with us for the past week while she was visiting, and knew to take her shoes off while she was staying with us (my wife told her on her first day). But she stayed at a hotel for the last couple of days of her trip, and for some reason while she was over for a visit, I guess she must have assumed that the rules had changed for her now that she isn't actually staying with us. 😕😕
Before she came over, she was at a restaurant. The last thing she always does before leaving a restaurant is to spend around 10 minutes in the restaurant's bathroom.
Ah, mother-in-laws........ aren't they a blast?