Carpet Sandals

[Psychlonic]

As the name suggests, these are made from carpet. They are meant to not just fit over the foot, but your footwear completely. They can be used to help silence your steps over noisy terrain such as gravel or across broken glass, and they can also be used to distort or completely hide footprints on hard, smooth surfaces such as hardwood floors.
At the very basic level, carpet sandals are carpet that’s been strapped to your footwear.There are countless ways to accomplish this task, however you’ll learn from this manual perhaps the most easy and most easily replicated method.
To start, you’ll need some carpet. The thicker and shaggier, the better. You can use old rugs, toilet seat covers, anything with a carpet cover. If you can avoid mama’s pink bathroom rugs, do so and select a darker, more natural color. Anything will work, however, as carpet sandals aren’t an accessory you will wear throughout the entire operation.
Cut out two sections, one for each foot. Place your foot down and cut around it. Leave some extra room, two finger widths apart is a good rule here. You’ll need this extra room for straps, and it’ll leave you with extra padding to ease onto the ground with when you walk.
Now that you’ve got your carpet pads, you’ll need to attach straps. The easiest way to do this for most carpetting is to simply cut out holes or rectangles in the carpet, as the bottom is generally tough enough that it doesn’t require any special preparation to prevent tearing while walking.
Now you need material for the straps. Nylon cord, twine, velcro straps, anything that will keep them attached to your footwear but will not take ages to put on. Velcro straps or buckles of any sort are preferred, and can be salvaged from old sandals, belts, backpacks, and more.


Being flexible, carpet sandals can be stored compactly until needed. You can either fold or roll them and stuff them into a cargo pocket or small backpack. That said, they remain larger than your typical equipment and should be only brought along on operations which you think you will need them.

[Ysidro]

This is cool, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Looking at this was good timing though, my neighbors just got new carpeting in. Thanks!

[Psychlonic]

Try them for sure, man. I'm not the originator of the idea - I think stealththief was the first to bring them up - but damn they work wonders. Completely silences gravel if you make them correctly, and has really saved me a couple times going from a wet, muddy area into a clean interior surface.

[stealththief]

I'm really not sure if I came up with the idea, seems like something I might be inspired to have come up with because I know a guy who uses them so "surf" tile floors or maybe I was inspired by ninja Ashiko or something, I really don't remember though lol.

[Biohazard]

Very good idea. Here's a thought on attaching them to footwear: use underwear elastic. You can buy rolls of that stuff for cheap and you can use your imagination to make it work. What you want to end up with is something that slips on your shoes/boots in seconds and is sturdy enough to stay on under heavy use. It might be a good idea to double up the elastic in order to make everything much stiffer. The only problem is that I'm pretty sure the elastic only comes in white- dye it or spray paint the shit out of it.

[The Atomic Fishy]

cut the elastic from old underwear now it is free in multiple colors and still does the same thing