Cleaner threw away/moved/stole my secret booze stash

I belong to an old family, so whilst I, personally, don't employ a cleaner, we do still have staff.

Sadly, my last housekeeper ate my guinea pigs. Have been rather reticent to employ another one since.

And you think you have problems...

I imagine the cleaners thought it was outside because it was rubbish and threw it away. What concerns me more is the fact that you're a) secretly drinking and b) hiding alcohol. I don't think you have an alcohol problem if your saying you only drink very rarely but you have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol and the way you're approaching it is odd. Drink like a normal adult if you want to drink! Your daughter isn't going to get upset if you drink responsibly around her - in fact she has no idea what you're drinking is alcohol unless you tell her. Hiding it is the bit that will give her hang ups for the rest of her life because she will find out one day and then she'll think you have something to hide.

And as I said it’s not healthy nor normal to to hide bottles

Drinking a couple of ciders 1 or 2 nights a week is not in itself an issue. What is an issue is how you are going about it. You are acting like an alcoholic and that having a drink is shameful. I think you need to look at getting some counselling. What is more unhealthy? Your daughter growing up seeing you with an occasional glass of cider, or watching her mum sneak off a couple of nights a week to drink in private?

I think the biggest problem here is that you’re drinking Somersby. Appalling excuse of a cider.

Joking aside;
I think, like your cleaner, I’d have assumed they were to be thrown. I’d just have a word with them and ask them to keep them as is in future.

The amount you’re drinking doesn’t scream “drinking problem” to me, but I do understand why you prefer to keep it out of view of your daughter.

My father was (“was” being the operative word there😬) an alcoholic and it’s given me a very odd relationship with alcohol. I won’t have a small glass of a wine with my dinner during the week because it feels “wrong”, in my head it’s the same as my dad necking a 50cl bottle of vodka at the dinner table, or having a 4 pack of cider with his breakfast. Which is ridiculous, I know.
I worry about my daughter seeing me drink because I associate a parent drinking with their potential violence and feeling scared, even though neither her dad nor I have ever displayed such behaviours (we’re those annoyingly jolly tipsy types). I had 4 ciders and a glass of Pimm’s at a BBQ last weekend and felt awful the next day that I’d “exposed” her to that. In reality, I was laughing and joking and singing and dancing, and she was joining in (with her lemonade) having a whale of a time.

I would have thought dh is more likely to have put the unopened one away not knowing you stash them in bedroom. I would not assume cleaner before speaking to my husband

OP, to answer your actual post - you need to ask the cleaner what they did with the bottles, and if they threw them away, then take the money out of their wages.

Their job is to clean, not to throw away unused bottles of alcohol.

If it wasn't them, then you need to ask your DH if he threw it away and ask him why.

I’d just ask the cleaner what’s happened to the bottles.
If they state they threw them away tell them to leave them alone in future and you will throw them away.

I wouldn’t want a cleaner throwing anything away ( unless it’s in the bin or clearly a bit of rubbish ) without asking first.

I agree with most posters, your cleaner probably thought they were rubbish as they were left out, just ask them to leave them alone? Half a bottle of a single serving of alcohol a couple of times a week does not make you an alcoholic and including 'secret booze stash' in your title is a bit goading IMO.

If your feeling guilty for drinking any amount of alcohol given your general stance on it and your house rules, well that's a very different thread altogether. I think you've derailed your own thread OP.

Agree, it’s not what she’s drinking it’s how drinking made her feel as a child she’s trying to avoid her child feeling this.

I have a similar thing if my husband is tipsy I’m front of our daughter which is rare and I mean twice a year , I want to kill him as I’m very damaged from two parents who drank, my daughter is not so she just laughs at him.

It’s not normal to hide drinking from your dc, neither is it normal to stop your DH having a drink at home and for you to hide your occasional drink.
Your DC is going to get your warped perspective sooner or later.

Does your DH have a drink problem?

Well, for one thing it’s not fair to have a rule that he can’t drink at home, while you do. For another, it’s really sensible to have accountability about your drinking so that one bottle doesn’t become half a dozen. And for a third, he might have been the one to move the bottles, not the cleaner, and be wondering how to bring it up.

Ps. Op I would assume the cleaner thought the bottles had been left over and were rubbish too.

Op Im Sorry to hear about your experiences as a child but I think this has affected your attitude around alcohol.

Someone up thread said it perfectly. But to me drinking in secret and hiding the bottles is the worst way to deal with it. It's ok to have a glass every now and again but be open and honest about it.

It's ok to have it in the fridge occasionally. Show your DD that alcohol is fine if controlled and as a social thing every now and again. Don't show her that alcohol is some extreme shameful thing that needs to done alone and hidden!

Be honest with your husband about it.

I scrolled through a lot of the posts... but OP, basically keeping secrets from your partner and hiding away to drink a warm tin of cider is concerning. Not the amount of alcohol or the frequency but that you had decided to have an alcohol free house (no problem with that, I grew up in one) and then you decided that it didn't apply to you in this very specific, slightly unusual situation. It would be far healthier to talk to your partner and say 'actually I think we could have a bit of alcohol in the house, I am really enjoying the idea of having 1-2 drinks now and again instead of being super committed to an alcohol free life' and then coming up with something everyone is comfortable about.

I will say however, that growing up in a house without any alcohol made it a whole 'thing' when I started to get exposed to it and I had a huge issue as a teenager as I had no exposure to any of this. I had no idea what a reasonable amount of drinking might look like, no idea what could happen and ended up having a bad relationship with drinking myself. So if, and only if, you are comfortable with this (and your partner), it might be worth modelling something reasonable with your daughter. I really had no idea that people would drink socially in a normal way - it was no drinking, or chugging too much beer in the parking lot with a bunch of my friends. Took me years to work out how many middle grounds are possible.

As are 90% of the threads on MN if you take that view. Most are questions posed, asking for opinions.

Are you popping up on threads titled - 'was I in the wrong? Have I been ghosted? Why have I been left out of this invite? Why is my neighbour not talking to me? Why have I been removed from this whatsapp group?' - saying well we don't KNOW OP, it's pointless asking?

Or derailing the thread with opinions about something the OP didn't ask about?

The point of the thread was exactly that - whether you think it pointless or not. OP didn’t ask for a critique of her drinking habits, she asked for opinions on how to approach the missing alcohol with the cleaning service. What she got was a gaslighting pile on which is now making her rethink a couple of small bottles of cider a week, drunk in peace on her balcony looking at the view. On MN alcohol threads that’s mission accomplished.

Also, random speculation about what happened aren't helpful or relevant.

Well that'll teach me to read the whole thread before I reply!!

OP, as your replies have gone on the penny seems to have dropped and you've stopped making excuses and actually taken in what people are saying to you. Which is fab. 😃 I think what you've said is perfect. Carry on relaxing and just having a somersby to chill on occasion, be open about it, with a meal, on the balcony, whatever. But treat it like it's just normal (which it is!) and don't feel any shame. Let her see you drinking responsibly, let her see the drinks in the fridge, or in the cupboard, the washed glass on the draining board. It doesn't have to be any more secret than having a lemonade would be.

I would still recommend counselling though to help you realign your views so you feel concrete on what 'normal' with alcohol actually means.

OP has said she’s only recently started this - in the last couple of weeks. It’s entirely possible she hasn’t yet decided the best way forward with her DD - completely understandable given her own experience.

So what was the point of the thread? Asking what the cleaners did was utterly pointless.

Have you not considered the fact that OP has only started to do this in the last couple of weeks, having not drunk alcohol for some time because it made her ill in peri-menopause ? Did it not cross your mind that she may still be deciding how to broach it with her DD, and until then she’s keeping it out of her way ? OP’s dad was an alcoholic. Her childhood memories of his excess are leading her to be cautious about letting her own child see her drinking even small amounts. That is what’s guiding her behaviour, not some insatiable need to drink in secret and hide the evidence.

Perfectly put. The so called ‘experts’ are projecting their own experience and some are coming across as desperate to convince OP she has a problem and should seek help. It’s gaslighting and it’s harmful.

Check the bin. I assume cleaners would put them in that

hiding booze isn’t good

i get you not w wrong to drink infront if dc due to your childhood

but assume they are in bed asleep when watching sunset

and tbh I think it’s good for children , esp if there are alcohol issues around them. - that a person can have one drink and that’s it

That drinking doesn’t mean downing drinks and getting wankered and making a prat of self

so to me the hiding seems weird rather then have in cupboard /in fridge etx @Dubaichocisbetterthanexpected

I got one don't for a minute think she is drinking too much or has problem with how much she drinks. But she has a problem with her view of alcohol. She has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol and is making frankly bizarre choices because of that.

It's beneficial for a child to grow up seeing a parent drinking responsible levels of alcohol in a normal home environment. That its nothing shameful to be hidden away, can be enjoyed responsibility in moderation without it being an issue, and isn't something that needs to be hidden away.