What people say
Never pass someone on the stairs, never leave shoes on a table, never open an umbrella indoors.Household · 460 searches a month
House superstitions
Never pass someone on the stairs, never leave shoes on a table, never open an umbrella indoors.
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
Varies; threshold customs documented from antiquity
That makes it
about 2,526 years old
Rank by age
3 oldest of 40 dated here
Category
Household
Searched
460 a month
Thresholds, stairs and doorways carry most of these rules because they are boundaries — between inside and outside, safe and unsafe. Carrying a bride over the threshold is Roman.
Why it stuck. Boundaries are where anxiety concentrates in every culture examined, which is why the same rules appear in places with no contact.
What is going on
The umbrella rule is Victorian and practical in origin: early metal-spoked umbrellas were large and spring-loaded, and opening one indoors broke things.Where it applies. European and North American; East Asian house rules follow feng shui logic instead.
Other household superstitions
Recorded around the same time
House superstitions is the 3rd oldest of the 40 dated superstitions here. Of those, 6 are younger than a century and 5 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →