To be annoyed at DMIL for putting a wet towel in the dustbin?

Very very well put x

You’re being absolutely pathetic

Right. So the bath mat is too bacteria ridden to put in the bin, but OK to leave in the bath for several days til the OP comes home. But my Mumsnet standards I am a complete slob, but even I wouldn't do that!!

"Clearly should just have stayed home."

I don't understand this passive aggressive statement. Why? So that you might have saved the bath mat?

"the point of this thread was to check how reasonable opening up a conversation with her would be about either washing or replacing it or even just not doing it again"

Not very reasonable at all given you have just had a few days away sans kiddy, thanks to them. I don't think telling her to wash it or replace it would come over well. It would make you seem peevish and ungrateful.

She's not going to leave it smelling in the bath for the entire weekend they are providing childcare for.

I can understand your annoyance at this OP. I don't think the babysitting has anything to do with it? The bath mat belongs to you, your mil doesn't get to decide what happens to it. Why didn't she just leave it in the bath for you or dh to deal with when you got home if she couldn't bear to deal with it?

It's insanely wasteful to just bin something that could easily be washed, I would find it hard to keep quiet if anyone did that with something of mine.

Either you really can’t afford to throw away a cheap bathmat, in which case you aren’t being “forced” by MIL to accept her babysitting but rather by your circumstances, or you have loads of other babysitting options, in which case the cost of a new bathmat is peanuts. Which is it?

I don’t disagree it’s mildly annoying that she threw the mat away instead of washing it or leaving it for you to wash but unless there is some other back story about her generally being profligate with your possessions I can’t see any reason to take it further.

OP you are being OTT
And I hate to break it to you but your outside bin will be full of bacteria and maybe mould

Isn't the problem that you go away for a few days when you don't want to?🙄

Exactly!! 👏👏

we "must" take up their babysitting offers even when we don't really fancy it / it then feeling impossible to mention anything that we're uncomfortable with (and yep we need to work out if there was anything behind DS's accident!).

Wow you sound more of a dick every time you post.

It was bad enough that you nitpicked over your MIL throwing away a bath mat when we thought she was babysitting for the evening.
I don’t like waste but it was obviously not malicious.

But now you’ve admitted that you’ve not gone away for just 1 night, it’s more and you have the nerve to moan about 1 bath mat.

Then you’re saying you’re basically forced to have her babysit - if that was in any way true (which it obviously isn’t) then you would just go for the 1 evening and not stay out for the entire night, let alone more than 1!

And now you’re implying that there’s something behind DS’s accident - yet you’re happy to be staying away and drinking.

You’re either not a very nice person and dislikes your MIL and will nitpick over anything or she’s not that great and you’re a bad parent and will leave your kids with her knowing she’s not good around your kids.

I’m wondering if this is a reverse as I struggle to believe anyone would admit to being such a twat.

There are bigger things to worry about. Get it back out of the bin and wash it, and apologise to your MIL, who was taking care of your child for you at the time.

News to me about bath mats - mine are just very chunky cotton.

Livid? Wayyyyyyyy OTT

Irate 😂

A laundry trough? Am I supposed to have one, has everyone else got one? It sounds like something out of a Magdalene Laundry.

Oh please, nasty mil insists you let them babysit and you're so reluctant to do so, you've gone away for multiple days?

Cop on, OP. Your more than happy to use them for babysitting and you let slip you actually want her to replace your mat that your kid pissed on in your house.

Yes, IKEA, well under a tenner.

With silly minor things like this, I always think if that’s the worst thing that happened to me today then I’m lucky, you need to look at life as a broad picture and not stress over silly little aggravating incidents.
I’d take MIL a big bunch of flowers and say thank you, just be thankful to have such generous loving people in your children’s lives.

Can’t people just have normal, everyday reactions and interactions to things and with people anymore? Why does everything in life have to be made so ridiculously dramatic nowadays?

It’s a bath mat. If that’s all you have to be ‘livid’ over you’re doing pretty well.

Op, I'm sure you have other bath mats. It really isn't a big deal and anyway you have retrieved the item and presumably washed it by now. Tell your PILs that if such a thing happens in future, you would prefer that it was washed; I'm sure they washed nappies in their day, it's no different, probably far less. Then let this one go.