In 2020 I went through a lot of sartorial peaks and valleys. I’d spend a week dressed as if I was going into the Vogue headquarters, followed by an entire day wearing the pajamas I slept in the night before—logging into Zoom meetings with rebuttals flowing through my head should a colleague call my bluff. While my zest for getting dressed in the morning ebbed and flowed throughout the months and weeks, one thing stayed constant: I never wore shoes. What did it matter? At home, nobody was around to see that I had resigned to shoving my haggard feet into socks, or the occasional cozy pair of slippers.

After a year of at-home work under my belt, however, I learned the power of getting dressed in the morning, and realized that my shoeless existence had a tiny something to do with my melancholy—I truly had nowhere to go and the absence of shoes made that abundantly clear with each passing day.

When the pandemic first began, my colleague, Senior Fashion Writer Liana Satenstein wrote about the psychological power of your sartorial decisions. She interviewed Professor Francis T. McAndrew from Knox College in Illinois who specializes in environmental psychology and isolation. “If you look at how you are dressed, that signals something about what you are prepared to do,” McAndrew told Liana. She also added, “If you’re dressed like a slob and you are in your sweat clothes, you’re either prepared to work out at the gym or clean out the basement, but you’re not doing anything professional or mentally challenging, and that spills over into your motivation and confidence.”

Indeed, my affinity for socks and slippers was spilling over into my motivation and confidence. So I decided, come 2021 it was time to invest in some great house shoes that I could wear around the house now and out and about later. Maybe a pair of loafers or flat boots that were easy to slip on and off, or anything with real soles that don’t smudge the floors but will keep me grounded should I step outside. I’ve now been wearing actual shoes at home for the last two weeks and I can safely say that the simple addition of beautiful, practical footwear has become transformative. It was the trick my brain needed to tether me back to normalcy circa-2019.

Here, shop the best house shoes to wear inside now and outside later. They’re easy to slip on and off just like slippers and socks, but will help you feel ready to carpe diem, even if that means staying put.