Usually I carefully plan for my Mother-In-Law’s visits, I clean, vacuum, mop, dust, put away, throw out, tidy up, straighten and general make the house look like “perfect home keeper central”. Sister-in-law with whom I share a house does the same, we both live in terror of the unexpected mother-in-law drive by.
But yesterday by some cursed mischance my mother-in-law managed to get 15 minutes alone in the house when we didn’t know she would be there! Oh the horror, beds were made, dishes put away, floors swept, rubbish thrown out and air freshened.
How will I face her again knowing she has seen my unmade bed, washed my breakfast dishes and put my dirty underwear in the washing machine, oh the shame.
Kimmom2 I would be happy to ship her stateside as long as you can cover the postage and handling fee’s
Please note that the Mother-In-Law comes with a gossip module which means that she will bring up your bad housekeeping skills at the most socially inopportune moment.
Your unmade bed, dirty laundry and messy kitchen will also be used as a cautionary tale to scare the grandchildren into eating their vegetables at dinner.
leechy, could we perchance start an exchange program of some kind? See, mine keeps giving our little one sugary treats. I’d pay to have a MIL that would make my daughter eat her veggies.
In fact, she and I had a bit of a row at dinner just tonight over greenbeans and the eating thereof. Logic and fair play* won the day, when I reminded her that we were supposed to go to the store and buy a blue balloon to replace the deflated one from her birthday party after dinner, but I got to decide when she was done with dinner.
[sub]*Fair play is when I get my way. She’s two, and obstinate as a bull. I win about 25% of the time, so a little blackmail is fair, as far as I’m concerned.[/sub]
My MIL, left alone in my house, once washed my kitchen floor, and my bathroom floor, with RAGS. On her KNEES.
I told her, later, “Um, you know, I do have a mop and a mop bucket down in the basement.” She said cheerfully, “I know, but I just wanted to get it really clean, and there’s nothing like scrubbing for that.”
She’s such a nice lady, and she just felt sorry for me with two little kids underfoot and a third on the way, so she thought she’d help out, but–urk.
I actually DID a clean-up on my friend’s house. I didn’t just drop in. The evening had been planned for a week. When I got there, every ash tray was overflowing, drinks were spilled on the coffee table (and dried, leaving a big sticky goober for me to get stuck in) and I stuck to the bathroom floor. There were dishes piled in the sink, and garbage falling out of the garbage bags. So I started cleaning up a bit, as I was stranded there til the next day. She was offended. Tough shit. So was I!
Please do not confuse the above post as being written by someone who is a clean freak. I am perfectly happy in a moderate level of dirt. But this incident was WWAAAYYYY over the line. I felt I had to do something. She had obviously taken leave of her senses.
My MIL is under strict orders not to touch anything of mine-- EVER.
Years ago while I was spending the weekend at her house (and planning to do laundry-- this was the early university years) she took it upon herself to wash and dry my clothes. Including a Merino Wool sweater. It shrank to Cabbage Patch kid size…
The good thing about apartment living is that you’re not likely to have a spare key to give to the in-laws
Ick. The thought of my mother in law in my house while I’m there is enough to freak me out. Besides, she doesn’t know how to keep house. Her house is gross.
My grandmother does this, Uggg. And not for the same reason as Duck Duck Goose’s MIL, but because she likes to shame people. She’s forbidden to be in my house alone unless she’s watching my kids (which she’s occasionally done for an hour or so.) She used to do the same thing to my mother the whole time I was growing up. She lived 4 blocks away and would just walk into our house at some ungodly hour in the morning before we were even awake and start to clean. Then later she sob that she was so poorly treated, “I’m not your maid!” she’d cry. Or she’d tell people what slobs we were. FTR my mother had a lot of clutter, but she was never unclean.
I have to brag on all my hardwork. My ex-mother-in-law used to compliment on how clean my house is. Even when they were there unannounced. She is a gross housekeeper. I think she’s a twin sister to ** JuanitaTech’s ** mother-in-law. HA!
small hijack:
JuanitaTech, are you a tech in the workplace? If so what kind, I have wondered ever since I saw your username.
I was fortunate to know the woman who would have been my mother-in-law – she died when I was 15, two years after Barb and I started seeing each other but of course well before we married.
I know having a woman who is dear to your husband but effectively no connection to you entering your home must be frustrating, especially if she has a touch of judgmentalism, but think for a moment about the alternative.
Barb’s mother didn’t like me particularly well – the fact that a boy was interested in her little girl didn’t sit well with her, and I was not the sort of young man she would have preferred (though as it turned out I was just what her little girl needed when she grew up). But nonetheless I’d put up with a lot of nosiparkerness and criticism from her to have her still around.
Well, since all of you people are so obviously rancid slobs, in twenty or thirty years, when you become MIL’s, you can lie back in your garbage filled house with unmade beds, crumbs in the toaster and coffee rings on the mahogany sideboard knowing full well that your kids are probably NOT cleaning their house in anticipation of your visit.
After all, someone needs to stomp out the cleaning gene, and by the sounds made in this thread we’ve located the community that cleans nothing!
Trust me, I have cleansed myself of the voluntary cleaning gene. I now only do it when the SO nags (but I don’t leave my underwear in the sink anymore).
I would be extremely pissed if my MIL did this. If she thinks she has any business touching my stuff, especially entering my bedroom, she’d get a rude shoc, when I caught up with her later.
I was talking to my step-brother’s wife one day, about how obsessive my step-mother was about cleaning. My SBW said that what her and my step-brother do before the folks visit is spend the week before scouring the house from stem to stern, and then apologize for it being such a “mess” when they arrive. My step-mother doesn’t come to visit me. Which is good, because I’d probably have to kill her if she did. (Both her and my dad seem to have this built in radar that compells them to find things that are important to me and throw them out, while crap I haven’t gotten around to tossing yet, is cleaned, polished and put on display.)
Goodness, I suddenly feel grateful for my MIL. She’s not much of a housekeeper, doesn’t generally do anything at my place (though she cheerfully cleaned my stove last time, which was nice, since I hate cleaning the stove), and only annoys me by bringing loads of food we don’t need and giving the Kidlet loud electronic toys.
Mind you if my mother came to visit she would probably to do the same thing. As it is she lives thousands of miles away and contents herself with posting down food - this month it was 2kg of home made rocky road chocolate (much better than an impromptu cleaning).
