@Bren: I won’t call you “lazy” for not having read all the previous comments, but if you had, you’d realize that for many people, taking shoes off takes more than “a few seconds.” Laced-up work boots are very time-consuming to remove and put back on, especially if you’re making continuous trips back and forth, as one general contractor mentioned. People with arthritis or other disabilities also have trouble, as do many children.

I have extra large slip-on houseshoes that I use in the same way–not because of mud or dirt, but because I don’t want to track chemical pesticides, etc, from wherever my shoes have been. As for the insides of the shoes being dirty, I seldom have the need for them with muddy shoes–I have clogs that I wear when working in the yard, and do just kick them off, and live in a climate where we seldom have snow. But if I did get them muddy, I really wouldn’t be washing them all the time. They are unitaskers, after all: their sole purpose is to keep what’s on your shoes off your floors; I don’t care what stays inside them because that part of the shoe never touches either my body or my floors. Besides, these look as if they’d be easy to hose off and hang outside to dry and disinfect in the sun.

Personally, I sometimes come back home for just long enough to unload groceries or use the bathroom before going to pick family members up from school or the airport, etc. I’d prefer to use the several minutes it would take to untie my shoes and then put them back on again (and wash my hands in between, because of course you do that when handling dirty shoes) for more important things–like be on time to where I’m going next. Perhaps some people could use that time to read a book on common courtesy and bone up on some of the things they missed when they were five.

I don’t think that this is pointless or stupid at all…

As the person who does most of the vacuuming, mopping and sweeping in our house, I can assure you that I totally have the respect to remove my shoes and boots, and even to wipe & dry my dog’s paws so she won’t dirty the floor. But I do use the surgical shoe covers (similar to this unitasker) all the time.

When you’ve got a 20 lb. kid in one arm (and you can’t put him down or he’ll get into everything) and you need to go back in to the house because you forgot your cell phone or something, these are easy to slip on (with one hand) over snowy, muddy or dirty shoes, go back into the house, get whatever you need, and not leave the floors a mess in the process.

Just sayin’.

What? Oh, hell. NOW you tell me.

Re: the Unitasker in question, it seems like a good idea in theory, and apparently works for some people. However, my experience is that the kind of people who refuse to remove their shoes couldn’t care less about your carpet in the first place. If they lack the respect to be bothered to remove their shoes or boots, will they take even the small bother to slip their feet into these things?

They are especially useful during the wintertime when people often have grit sitting underneath their shoe soles, which can leave very ugly scratches on wooden floors.

And as those slippers are made of felt, they also have a bit of a nice polishing effect on the floor just by walking around.