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Original poster

Using a plate or bowl when eating yes or no?

59 replies

Colango · 09/07/2025 10:37

We had a very bad ant infestation earlier this year, took weeks to get rid of them. We have pets and hard flooring, and I like to keep the floors clean.

Coming down in the morning to tread with bare feet on someone else’s gob crumbs gives me the ick but even more so, I don’t want the ants back

Members of my family seem to be allergic to using plates or bowls to eat food from? Or sitting at a table to eat? Is this normal?

DH is terrible for eating without a plate and it makes a mess. He brushes his fingers together over the floor too to get crumbs off them. I would do this over a sink or a bin if I did not have a plate, not just straight onto the floor in the house? Am I the weirdo?

I asked DH he said he doesn’t want to do extra washing up, but the kids are wandering around eating food as well. I hoovered after dinner then he let them have toast and all of them stood in the middle of the kitchen and created a carpet of crumbs - which I trod in and then I have a foot covered in toast crumbs from someone else’s mouth. Yes I made him sweep it up but we have a kitchen island with chairs they could have sat on to eat, then it can be cleaned off the worktop?

USE A PLATE? or perhaps I have PMT 😒

OP posts:
Original poster
Colango · 09/07/2025 16:08

BreakingBroken · 09/07/2025 15:10

Not that dh doesn’t use plates but for toast/sandwiches/cheese crackers between meals he like small cutting boards.
especially ones with handles.
We also have a floor robot and other gizmos to make life easier (central vac with multiple ports).
I was a skeptic but highly recommend the floor robot, and the cutting boards.

Our dog just barks too much at things like this or I would already have one. Dog thinks it’s an evil robot invader 😂

We have nice plates too!

OP posts:
NeilDiamondsBlowDry · 09/07/2025 15:12

@Colango sorry you have to put up with this, using the duvet cover to wipe Dorito dust is so unnecessary

BreakingBroken · 09/07/2025 15:10

Not that dh doesn’t use plates but for toast/sandwiches/cheese crackers between meals he like small cutting boards.
especially ones with handles.
We also have a floor robot and other gizmos to make life easier (central vac with multiple ports).
I was a skeptic but highly recommend the floor robot, and the cutting boards.

Original poster
Colango · 09/07/2025 15:07

It’s not just my own family, we had people round recently and some of their children also ate like feral animals. Giant handfuls of things shoved Into their mouth, talking with mouth full, food everywhere.

OP posts:
yeesh · 09/07/2025 15:07

he is a dirty bastard and the kids are copying him. Eating crumble from his hand is gross 🤮

Original poster
Colango · 09/07/2025 15:03

NeilDiamondsBlowDry · 09/07/2025 14:54

@Colango so a tight wad as well ?

Yep! I do tell him when he is being stingy. He doesn’t like us buying nice food unless it’s very cheap and a lot of volume for money, so like he will pay £5 for a massive load of cheap sausages with like 60% pork content but will complain if I wanted to buy £5 of nice fish as it’s smaller and worse in terms of value and doesn’t reach as far. He will spend loads on treats like crisps and crap. This means we have a lot of crunchy crumbly snacks in our house and he eats a lot, so in the evenings I will have cleared up and he will still be eating all night so more mess comes out 😭

His youngest has this habit to try to finish eating faster they will put absolutely HUGE mouthfuls of food in their mouth, which take like 10 mins+ to chew up they often end up spitting it out as it’s too big and they chat chat chat chat at the table I say DH, could you not just tell them to put smaller portions in their mouth? The other child shreds all the food into tiny pieces with their fingers as if mice had a party

OP posts:
ayepecking · 09/07/2025 15:00

Crikey, I even decant crisps into a bowl. I can't imagine it! Sounds feral.

NeilDiamondsBlowDry · 09/07/2025 14:54

@Colango so a tight wad as well ?

Original poster
Colango · 09/07/2025 14:52

Oh I’m often hovering around with the hoover and he acts like I am hyacinth bucket!

I once caught him wiping his hands onto the duvet from some messy crisps he had brought into the bedroom I said go wash you hands fgs! Eat them downstairs!

He wouldn’t buy kitchen roll for this he would say a waste of money 😂

@MadameSzyszkoBohusz i am moving in. I will be there at 6pm

I’ve taken to serving food in the garden every weekend even if it’s not that warm 😂

OP posts:
MadameSzyszkoBohusz · 09/07/2025 14:47

Good grief, they’d hate my house. Not only is all food eaten off a plate, but whilst sat at the dining table.

JMSA · 09/07/2025 14:30

I can’t imagine not using a plate.

Rainbow321 · 09/07/2025 14:24

We use denby pasta bowls for spag bol , chilli & rice , curry & rice , anything that has a sauce like base with either rice or pasta . Less mess that way .

Endofyear · 09/07/2025 14:21

We always use plates and I've never allowed the children (now adults) to wander around eating! Your DH sounds like an arse to be honest, he's a grown man not a teenager! And I would definitely tell the children that talking with their mouth full is extremely bad manners and gross 🤮

I would make them hoover every single time they make crumbs on the floor - they'll soon get fed up and start using a plate!

NeilDiamondsBlowDry · 09/07/2025 14:14

As they aren’t house trained sufficiently to use a plate perhaps suggest a sheet of kitchen roll if extra washing up is the reason

outerspacepotato · 09/07/2025 14:12

The crumbs from the crumble being brushed on the floor, eek.

"oh I didn’t know it would be this messy’"

Oh, sure he did. He just didn't care. I'd laugh then zip tie the hand vac to him.

With multiple people wandering around leaving food trails, you're lucky you don't have worse things than ants. Give each one who does that a daily task of hoovering and mopping.

Doitrightnow · 09/07/2025 12:04

Give them a day or two each when they have to hoover each week. Would mean you're not always doing it, and hopefully make them realise that the crumbs don't vanish magically.

Tell them if they use a plate every time and drop no crumbs they won't need to hoover.

eqpi4t2hbsnktd · 09/07/2025 11:24

My DP will eat over the skin if I tell him to get a plate... gross but fine... then the sink is full of crumbs as he doesn't waste the water to rinse it!
Kids are much better since I explained why we get mice..

Original poster
Colango · 09/07/2025 11:21

outerspacepotato · 09/07/2025 11:12

Do they just wander around eating finger foods?

We sit to eat and use plates or bowls, but I also sweep my kitchen daily because I grew up with that as a chore and then did restaurant work when a teen.

For ants, I use a little bit of peppermint oil in my homemade cleaning spray. They don't like it, I don't know if it disrupts their scent trails or what.

Yes they wander around eating without a plate all the time because he thinks washing up is more hassle and he might say he sweeps up, but by this time everyone has skipped away with crumbs all over them spreading it to all the other rooms already

DH the other day was eating a CRUMBLE topped pie on the sofa out of his hands, he kept stopping eating every few moments to brushing all the crumbs onto the floor from his T-shirt and do the finger on finger brushing thing (when you rub them together and I get a visceral ick).

I just said ‘we have plates in the kitchen?’

He looked at me like I was insane and said ‘oh I didn’t know it would be this messy’

to which I responded ‘it’s a crumble pie? I assume it’s in the name?’

OP posts:
outerspacepotato · 09/07/2025 11:12

Do they just wander around eating finger foods?

We sit to eat and use plates or bowls, but I also sweep my kitchen daily because I grew up with that as a chore and then did restaurant work when a teen.

For ants, I use a little bit of peppermint oil in my homemade cleaning spray. They don't like it, I don't know if it disrupts their scent trails or what.

sonoonetoldyoulifewasgonnabethisway · 09/07/2025 11:12

Tell him, its fine, the time he's saved washing up he can use to hoover the floors

Ifailed · 09/07/2025 11:04

Serve all his food on the floor, he might get the message.

Original poster
Colango · 09/07/2025 10:56

KrisAkabusi · 09/07/2025 10:48

You're not unreasonable for wanting them to wipe up properly instead of scooping crumbs onto the floor. But you are being unreasonable for thinking they all come out of their mouths. Gob crumbs? Unless they are actively spitting everywhere, it's just normal crumbs that fall off toast.

But they are out of your mouth to some degree? It’s the action of biting into the toast that causes it to get crumbs everywhere so some of it will have your spit on it. Then it’s going over people’s feet.

And yeah he also encourages the kids (some of our kids are my step kids) to talk with their mouths full as he thinks meal times is ‘a family social activity’ which I do not disagree entirely, but food does get spat about, I politely ask the kids to chew nicely or not speak with a whole mouth of food when speaking to me but most of the time I eat mine and get up and leave them to it. He knows why I leave sometimes and I don’t want to give the kids a complex about their gross table manners whilst gently trying to get them to be more mindful of others around them. At least we have progress with cutlery being used.

I notice other people children can be this way. If we see family it’s a table full of DC who were baby led weaned and never learned any proper table manners and still using their fingers to eat age 10+, spitting food around and leaving a huge mess behind for the waiting staff to clean up

OP posts:
Milker · 09/07/2025 10:53

Oh, I thought this was going to be a debate about what types of food people used a bowl rather than a plate for! (Though in our house, it's much more fork vs spoon -- DH uses spoons for things I would automatically use a fork for, and for some reason this causes me deep, inner annoyance...)

Yes, of course people should use a plate or a bowl to eat from, and sit at a table while they do so, in a house prone to ant infestations.

Gowlett · 09/07/2025 10:52

DH is always eating without a plate & goes full Kevin The Teenager when I mention it. I don’t want to clean up after an adult… He also gets butter everywhere, and brown sauce globs.

soupyspoon · 09/07/2025 10:52

Rosesanddaffs · 09/07/2025 10:46

Tell them to use a bloody plate and refuse to hoover up the crumbs, once they start sticking to their feet they will wisen up xx

Mine wouldnt, he wouldnt care. And he wears slippers so he wouldnt notice.

He wouldnt care about ants either unfortunately or rather than just do the simple thing and clean up properly would get some expensive technological anti ant device to solve the problem.