It was specifically to help keep the house cleaner, and it did. The floors were vacuumed and mopped, but this meant it didn’t have to be every damn day. With the amount of snow we got, nobody really wanted to wear their winter boots into the house most of the year anyway. I vaguely remember some Japanese-American character on TV (Arnold on Happy Days?) asking confused white characters to remove their shoes at his door, as a gag. It baffled me. (“Wait, people actually wear outdoors shoes inside their houses? Why? How? But…”)