Five reasons to leave your shoes at the door

1. Go barefoot

It's good for your feet to mix things up - wear shoes outside, but go barefoot at home. One thing that causes sore feet is wearing shoes with hard, unforgiving soles for hours each day. These shoes can help wear away the fatty pad that cushions and protects your heel bone. When this fatty pad wears away, your heel may feel bruised, or have a constant dull ache.

2. Cut out the bacteria

Think about where your feet have been all day - you may have walked across public bathroom floors, on footpaths dodging dog walkers and through shopping centres. Your feet will have collected a jungle of bacteria! Keep it all contained at the door.

3. Air quality

Along with the bacteria, you can well be tracking in toxins to your house. These can include those powerful cleaning chemicals that they use in public bathrooms, pesticides, fertilisers and fungal spores.

4. Looking after your floors

Tracking mud, dirt and debris into your house means that you have to clean more often. It means that you have to vacuum harder on your carpeted areas and scrub harder on your tiled and wooden floors. You have to work harder at keeping your house clean and that extra scrubbing and elbow grease can actually damage your floors over time.

5. Avoiding scratches

High heels might look great, but they can make indents and scratches on your floors. Wearing shoes with points and heels can end up knocking dings into your floors - especially those bare, minimalist wooden floors.