To think some of the things said on here, very few people actually think/do in real life?

@CharlotteRumpling There are absolutely circumstances where cutting ties with your family is the right thing to do for your physical and mental well-being.

But on MN going "No Contact" is often thrown around as an option for things such as your children not receiving an invitation to you brother's childfree wedding or as a way to resolve an argument with your MIL. It's really naive to imagine that taking the nuclear option isn't going to have wide-ranging repercussions. It's not the panacea for all sticky family situations!

The posters who insist men and women can never be true platonic friends and two people of the opposite sex doing something normal like going for dinner or to the cinema is automatically a date. I don’t know anyone who thinks like that. I’m sure the people who do think that would say the same though!

How terrible @ARichtGoodDram. I don't blame you for going NC, and I imagine most posters who have are the same.

Mumsnet in a hovel full of everyone who knows better than you.

Lots on here don’t get it. I got called selfish and stupid on here, and told my children would resent me, for refusing an inheritance from my father.

Had no contact since I was 14 (lived with my grandfather since I was 7), didn’t want anything to do with him and declined to visit when he was dying. My earliest memory is him stamping on my brother’s head. When I was 4 he set fire to my Christmas presents because I was cheeky and the reason we were removed was because I told my teacher about him burning one of my siblings with an iron as a punishment.

Apparently him ‘reaching out’ when he was dying, then making me executor of his will after I’d been crystal clear I wanted nothing to do with or from him was a sign of regret from him…

Or when it's time for the inheritance to be dished out.

I used to vaguely think the same, but then I realised that lots of people on here have had really horrible childhoods. Not to sound pious or anything, but shocking parental and sometimes sibling abuse, and thus NC.

I had decent parents and sibling, so I didn't realise the extent of this.

But that's why there's a brush there. So that anyone who sees anything left behind after they've flushed can quickly brush it away, without having to waste wodges of loo roll and get their hands down in there.

Oh, and all the posters who swear they've gone "No Contact" with every living relative in their family and it's solved all their problems, they are so happy, so very, very happy....unbelievably happy, don't miss the bastards, but wait a minute...WHY DOESN'T ANYONE MAKE A FUSS OVER MY BIRTHDAY????

The attitudes that surprise me are:

The large number of posters who seem really against the idea of using wraparound care - this is totally normal in my social circle but on here it's like a lot of posters would rather walk through fire than use it. It's not that bad!

The number of posters who wouldn't ever walk alone after dark - IRL I only know one woman who won't

The reluctance to leave teens at home on their own. I have seen a lot of people asserting that their kids need to be 13+ before they can be alone in the house - I don't have teens but that's not the view of my friends who do.

Purely on the toilet brush thing, we definitely don’t have one, DW hates them with a passion, thinks they are unhygienic things, we do use the duck toilet wipe things but absolutely not a brush

I hope you're right. Many posts are so mean spirited and "my little family" on here. It's not, thankfully, how real life looks to me.

Yup

'Change the locks!!!'

The thing is that most of us mostly socialise with other people like ourselves. So when you get a lot of people with different perspectives on one forum a lot of things will surprise you.

I have never WFH while looking after my children except when one is unwell. And I don't know anyone who does this with a child under 10.

of course you can’t work from home ever at any point with your child around you unless the child is of high school age

The fact that lots of people do this in real life does not make it okay. My workplace now has quite a few people being paid to work full time but if you want to be able to reach them or get any sense out of them it had better be during school hours.

Toilet brush free zone here.

The people with perfectly behaved children who got that way because of their incredibly strict parenting.
My DD once suggested we exclude a child from her all class (nursery) party. I said no, we invite everyone.
I shared the story on here and one poster told me that if that was her child- she would have cancelled the party.
Really? A 4th birthday party? Because a child privately suggested something a bit unkind?
In real life I don't meet parents that unreasonably strict.

Actually- there was one time.
I was working for a children's charity and some poor kid had been made to donate her pocket money to us as a punishment. We got something like £3.50 and a letter explaining that she'd been acting spoiled and ungrateful and now had to donate the money to "less fortunate" kids.
It made me think of mumsnet because its the kind of parenting people on here will claim they do.

We all felt sorry for that kid and we thought her Mum was a dick.

We live in a hard water area. The use of regular cleaner with limescale remover (I use Harpic) is fine overall - although the odd scrub with a sponge is good. It's the build up that's the problem. Look at kettles - you don't have to scrub them. But you do have to use strong limescale remover because most of us, even in hard water areas, are not doing it frequently.

Were/are you in a soft water area? If not how do you get rid of limescale without a brush? Limescale remover softens it - but you still need to brush.

Ditto, their husbands would never watch porn

And then when she "just happened to be looking through her husband's laptop" and discovered that he (gasp!) had been viewing porn, she'll be told that the only solution is to divorce as he's crossed her "clear boundaries"🙄

Don't get me started on all the " You'll be so much better off without him" crap advice handed out like candy! Of course you'll be better off broke, trying to eek out an existence on benefits, raising your children in poverty ...it'll all magically work out and at least you won't have to spend Christmas with your inlaws!

No, I don't expect anyone to leave a mark for me to clean up after them. If there was, I would use a big wodge of loo roll and then bleach

Also, I do think different toilets are more prone to visible mess. Older ones, definitely. Assume it's something to do with the material/shape?

Yes. I don't actally mind cleaning toilets - i mean, I've had DC and had to clean up endless poo plus you know, cleaning myself daily for 50 odd years. It's the "hanging around with bits of poo on it indefinitely" that I have an issue with which is why I don't like toilet brushes.

Now that we seem to have more teenage boys in the house I am planning to buy a new one of those disposable/use once versions. Not for every day, but for the odd moment post-random-teenager when a bit more effort is needed.

The rest of the time, it's a quick wipe down with tissue and a good hand wash immediately after (if necessary) and I throw toilet cleaner/bleach in regularly and leave to sit before flushing, using a sponge and gloves occassionally with additional bleach as needed.

That's routine cleaning, though. Surely you don't do that every time there's a mark on the bowl.

I put on rubber gloves and clean it with toilet cleaner and a cloth which I then wash (I don't use it for anything else) then loads of bleach