“Tell her if she doesn’t like it, she can clean it herself!” But what if she did?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m honestly not sure what to think about this one. How would you feel?

My MIL and I are total opposites. She’s very direct, and has made no secret of the fact that she thinks I’m not good enough for her son. She’s mellowed some since the arrival of the grandchild, but she’s still very outspoken. She’s also a neat freak.

We live in a state of controlled chaos. We’re not infested with vermin by any means, but clutter collects on every flat surface and we may let the dishes sit in the sink overnight (gasp!) before we load the dishwasher. We do deep clean the house to within an inch of its life before the in-laws come to visit. I pay particular attention to the guest bath.

For the first time in forever, DH tackled the guest bath while I concentrated on the kitchen before her last visit. He did a half-hearted job on the tub (this is also six-year-old Andrew’s bathroom, so the tub gets some hard use) and I said I’d go over it again.

Then DH tells me, “Why bother? Mom will just make Dad clean the tub before she takes a shower like she always does.”

I questioned him about always, and he claims this has happened every time they’ve stayed with us. We’ve been married for fifteen years.

I have seen FIL clean the tub – but always a few days into a week long visit. And he’s the kind of guy who will help clear the table and load the dishwasher, oil the squeaky hinges on the doors, etc. So I thought he was just helping out as usual (and wishing it would rub off on his son!)

So here’s where I’m torn: Part of me is insulted that after I scrub and scrub the bathroom (I’ve been known to spend an hour on the tub), they feel the need to clean it again. But then, outspoken MIL has never said a word to me about it. She has never been shy with criticizing my cooking or my parenting choices, yet she kept quiet and just took care of the situation herself. (Yes, FIL did the actual work. But that’s how they roll. He works, she directs.)

Which way would you go? Insulted, or grateful you never knew about it?

2

Grateful. A really intolerable Mother in law would come to you and obnoxiously ask for cleaning stuff, so that you’d know she was re-cleaning.

But…does this mean that you now can skip the effort, and don’t have to clean the tub at all for her? I only see the up-side there! Or will you have to keep cleaning so as to pretend you don’t know she’s gonna clean all over again. Hmmm, this is getting complicated.

Maybe you should just leave her a brand new pair of plastic flipflops to use in the shower. :smiley:

3

You know, this isn’t about you. It’s about the fact that her son no longer belongs to her, and she’s in desperate need of a power fix. Go ahead and clean the bathroom to your standards, then understand that even if you had torn out the entire bathroom and rebuilt it from scratch in a clean room while wearing a bunny suit, she would still need to re-clean it.

While she’s busy doing that, make yourself a drink and kick back, knowing that you are a wonderful person for not killing her.

Alternatively, you could grind up a bunch of Valium into her water bottle and see if it helps.

4

My old RPG group used to take turns about which house we’d go to. When it was Longlegs’ turn to “be with grandma” (who had Alzheimer’s so she couldn’t be left alone in the house, but didn’t need constant watching), we went to his house.

It was kind of a strange house. Every single room was spotless. Not museum-rooms, but everything just-so. You never saw a magazine on the coffee table, or an open notebook on a bedroom’s table; neat piles of books, every pen in a decorated glass… Longlegs’ mom was as welcoming as can be, but when a glass of cocoa fell to the floor in that particular kitchen, the feeling of regret was bigger for having blemished that mirror-like floor than for the loss of the drink of the gods. In any other house (where instead of in a tiled kitchen we might be playing on wood or a rug) we’d clean it as soon and as well as we could, but it was assumed that Elbow Against Cup happens, when you’re dealing with teenagers.

I think your MiL might be related to Longlegs’ mom, who would pile up and align the manuals and the dice on the kitchen’s table before she and her husband left and who, if she ever saw us actually rolling dice, had to cross her arms to keep from grabbing and neatening them. It’s not serious and it’s got nothing to do with you, the phase of the moon or the status of sinoamerican relations.

5

An hour on the fucking tub? Are you insane?

I can not think of anything that would require an hour to clean a tub - I lived in an area that you could damn near smelt the water for pig iron, and as long as the area where water might drip and leave residue was CLRed every few days it didn’t stain.

My advice, if you live in a iron rich area, install a reddish brown tub, toilet and sink and tell MIL to pack sand.

Or wait until she is actually there, put undilluted chlorine bleach into a spray bottle and physically hose it down in front of her, tell her there is now nothing alive on the surfaces and if she wants it any cleaner SHE can do it, and take FIL out for a beer. She is just absolutely insane.

Or maybe tell her to stay in a hotel.
[well I dont actually think you are insane … =) ]

6

Put together a whole cleaning kit and, when she asks for supplies, also give her a mop, broom, Windex, paper towels, vacuum cleaner etc. and a list of everything in the house (the whole house) that needs cleaning. Every time she says she is done with something, point out something that she missed.

7

Some people clean the tub after each use, from habit when several people shared one tub. It may just be that.

Otherwise, why be offended? In your case, I would gracefully accept MIL’s help.

8

I think if she was ostentatiously re-cleaning things you’ve already cleaned, or complaining about your standards of cleanliness to either you or your husband, you’d have a legitimate complaint.

But she’s not. She’s just quietly re-cleaning the tub, God knows why. Frankly, even if you sandblasted it for hours, she’d probably go over it again, because she sounds like one of those people who don’t know something is clean until they do it themselves.

I see your irritation because of course the take-away is that your idea of clean isn’t clean enough for her, but she’s not making a big deal of it, she’s just making herself comfortable. And assuming you want her to be comfortable in your home, I think your only choice is to chalk it up to some weird tic or disability on her part and forget it.

9

If you spend an hour cleaning a bath tub, I’d say you were the one with the problem!

Re the OP, I’d let it slide and pretend I didn’t know, and next time she comes to stay just remember that she is a guest in your house and if she feels the need to clean then let her get on with it. I know my mother has higher standards than I do but she also has more time to clean, so if she comes to visit me, she keeps her hands and her comments to herself - she simply wouldn’t dream of being so rude.

10

Perhaps she’s a germaphobe and embarrassed about it. Bathrooms are especially tricky for germaphobes. That may be why, despite her being very outspoken about everything else you do, she doesn’t say anything about cleaning the shower. The logical part of her brain knows its clean, but she can’t get past it in the other part of her brain. She just can’t use it until she knows its super super super clean, and even then, she’s still probably freaking out a bit. (That is, if she’s a germaphobe.)

It would make sense, but IANA Psychiatrist and I don’t personally know your MIL.

11

I would give her a pass on it as well. She’s not saying anything to you, which is a blessing. Clean like you ordinarily do, and shrug your shoulders and go on.

As one who has had a 6-year old son who played outside in the summertime, I understand scrubbing the tub for an hour. That is one industrial-strength bathtub ring !

12

AH-hahahahahahahasnort

The OP mentions the MIL has made it clear that she thinks OP is not good enough for her son.

Deal with someone like that long enough, and soon *nothing *can be done gracefully. Particularly since MIL does not sound like a gracious person herself.

13

Can’t you just make sure she knows that her son now has the responsibility for cleaning the guest bath? Then just (figuratively) wash your hands of it.

I guess this approach can be hard for some women, but the stereotypical guy would have no problem doing this.

14

My vote: clean the tub as usual so you aren’t embarassed by it, and ignore any suggestion that she cleans it (or has it cleaned by her husband) before use. This is her issue, not yours.

15

This. Then it’s her failure (in training her kid to clean properly) and not yours.

16

Some people are OCD about germs and cleaning. She isn’t saying anything to you, she’s taking responsibility for her own needs. She is doing what she needs to do to feel comfortable. The fact that she is cleaning the tub she uses and not cleaning your closets or moving your furniture to vaccuum tells you that she is merely taking care of her own needs, not trying to help you.

(Although my mother comes over and cleans my house - right down to my closets. And while it took my husband a little getting used to, it rocks).

17

Yeah, this. I wouldn’t let it bother me, since she’s made a point of NOT bringing it up to you. That means that either she recognizes it as her issue, or she doesn’t consider it a big enough deal to gripe about. Follow her lead, and don’t make a thing.

18

One thing I wonder about: does he clean the tub for her every day at home, too? Because I know people who would totally do that, and their grown children don’t think anything about it happening when the parents come to visit. It’s just sop, as far as they’re concerned. The reason I ask is that if your inlaws have never mentioned this to you, and mil has never backed down from criticizing you to your face before, it seems weird to me that your husband knows they “always” do this. It makes me wonder if he means always always and not just “every time they visit” always. In which case, accept as one of her/their little weirdnesses, shrug, and go on. And if she only does that away from home, odds are excellent she does it at other people’s houses and hotels, too. So just accept it as one of her little weirdnesses, shrug, and go on.

And be grateful she doesn’t offer to help you hire a cleaning lady like my mil and gmil both did the first couple of times they visited us. His mom at least waited until dinner, but Mamaw did it within the first half-hour. And like you say, I’d scrubbed the place top to bottom–pulling out furniture, taking a toothbrush to the sink faucets, bathing the dogs and putting them in scarves, everything. Besides, they’d both seen (and cleaned) his apartments; they knew it was far cleaner than it would have been if he’d been left to his own devices.

Given their personalities and family dynamics, though, I don’t think they meant anything insulting or mean by it. I honestly think they were honestly trying to help me because they knew he really didn’t have the time and had never really had the interest to keep the place like that, but actually saying that would have involved admitting he’s not perfect. Since he is The Boy and the sun shines out of his ass, such an admission is unthinkable. It’s just the way things work in that family.

Of course, even when you have a generally good relationship and totally believe they didn’t mean anything by it, there’s something about your mil implying that your house isn’t clean enough that’s almost universally like a thrown-down gauntlet. Every woman I have ever told that story to has immediately and invariably puffed up in righteous indignation on my behalf, even though I was laughing when I told it. And even though I knew in my heart they had no malicious intent behind the offer, it still pissed me off enough to say something to my husband the second time they did it.