Helpful hints for houseguests:

[lovelybertha]

1. Take care not to make the assumption that because your host lives in a seaside town, they want to be running a guest house.

2. If you'd like a clean towel, ask. Leaving wet towels in the bath/on floor of bathroom will not provide a signal for housekeeping staff (see point 1).

3. Attempt to keep your belongings as contained as possible. Hanging your manky dressing gown up in the living room is neither appropriate or necessary.

4. Take care to remove any pubic hairs that might stick to the communal bar of soap. Particularly if their colour makes them very distinctly yours.

5. If breakfasting extra specially early in a household with pre-school age children, note that it will be much appreciated if you don't eat the last banana and drink the last of the milk.

6. Leaving mugs and inadequately scraped plates in the sink is not as helpful as putting them in the dishwasher. Running a bit of water on to them is not the same as washing up.

7. Bags of bread are to be opened from the top. Ripping a hole in the side and taking slices from the middle, is quite simply, really fucking annoying.

8. If you offer to 'treat' your host to a 'night off cooking', they will assume you are offering to either cook a meal yourself or take everyone out. A ready meal from Asda will underwhelm.

9. If your host is providing you an alternative to hotel accommodation whilst you work (and earn loads of money) in their home town, failure to note the above hints, and going on about how much money you're saving will be interpreted as 'Taking The Piss'.

10. Following from point 9: It's nice to say 'thank you'. Gifts (ie. bottle of wine/ flowers/ chocs) will be gratefully received by your host.

Ooh Empusa you must be from my house!

• If you are the guest of one person in a house-share, and sleeping on the sofa, do not make the sitting room effectively your bedroom by slumbering peacefully on the sofa all day because you don't start work until the evening. Their housemates will not be enchanted that they are now confined to their own rooms or a teeny kitchen due to the presence of a snoring total stranger who has barricaded themselves in.

Oh there always has to be at least one of those doesn't there Elephants! I remember a fair few hushed conversations in the kitchen wondering if it would be totally unreasonable to stand outside the living room door banging pots and pans together

If you successfully manage to get your host a small thank you gift, don't ruin the sentiment by phoning them to cadge £20 off them for the taxi to the airport "...since I spent all my money on those nice choccies for you".

If I've managed to invest in a spare room, do me a favour and USE IT when I'm mortally hungover and need a break from relentless hosting duties. Go read a book or something!

DrewsGirl I do the same, though if it's someone who I know is particularly highly strung I ask first. Especially after someone I know on another forum came online one night specifically to rant about how her MIL had the gall to sit with her feet curled under her on the sofa. Said MIL had removed her shoes at the door so I wasn't really sure what the problem was.

If you decide to descend on someone for a 4 night stay, barely a week after the birth of their third child in 3.5 years, you do not:

1. Remove all the table lamps from the room your DC are staying in, put the DC in there, shut the door tight and tell them to shut up - this does not constitute "putting them to bed" All it means is that they will scream for an hour as they are locked in a strange room in the pitch black. Their screaming will keep all of my DC awake and give me the heebeegeebees ... but it will ensure I will put your children to bed for the next 3 nights.

1. Go on a trip to Morrisons. There are Morrisons everywhere. It is not a tourist destination. Running out without your DC, leaving me to look after 5 DC a week after giving birth is not appriopriate.

1. Yell "GO AWAY" to your DC at 6am when they come into your room. This a. wakes everyone else up and b. is ineffectual. All it does is get your DC to wake me, or my DC up.

1. Stay in bed until 9am while I look after your DC - since 6am - give them all breakfast, get them dressed... then waltz down and ask me what is for breakfast.

1. Ask when dinner is, and I say 12.30, then go out and come back at 1.30 and still expect to eat

1. Say you will arrive "in the morning" When pressed admit to "late morning," then arrive at 2pm.

I should point out, that this is not unlike the pattern of any previous visits, it was the fact it was a week after DC3 was born that burned the unpleasantness into my memory. And also, in all of the time I have known them, that I have had only two cups of tea at their house. Ever. No food. Ever. Nothing else.

Oh definitely NU Empusa. This was in a previous houseshare and all the houseguests were Portuguese (therefore didn't understand my oh-so-subtle references to their peaceful slumbers) and stayed at least 3 weeks.

If you have a key to someone else's house because you are their friend/relative/landlord/former housemate, it is NOT ok to turn up unexpectedly at 3am on Friday night with your giant slavering hound and your friend's even more enormous slavering hound, and take over the entire sitting room as a bedroom for you and the dogs for the weekend. If you do decide to do this, it is not kind to go out for the day and leave your wolfpack in the house - especially if you are the landlord who hasn't bothered to repair the catches on the bedroom doors. Coming home to find their bed has been made into a pool of hair and drool from the hounds of the baskervilles who have made the lovely clean sheets into an unholy nest may result in a frosty atmosphere from your hosts - all the more so if they cannot afford/are not allowed to change the locks and know you may turn up at ANY TIME.

Oh, and I honestly love dogs, so when I say these dogs were a) massive b) insane c) out of control and d) destroyed most of the house, I really really mean it.

Oh god oh god - I forgot. Swap "out for the day" to "out for the weekend having got lucky on Saturday night".

Your husband ringing to tell me in Jan that you MIGHT be in the area in April but he's not sure does not for a jolly hostess make. If my phone number stops working CHECK my contact details with my mother before you come up. Not the morning of your arrival. Ringing me out of the blue to tell me you'll be here in 4 hours, then turning up at my workplace 30 mins later, leading me to change the time of my lunchbreak for the second time that day is not helpful.

Do not say there'll be 4 of you staying 3 nights, then the day you arrive point out it'll only be 2 of you for 3 nights, then you're being joined for the other 2 for 4 nights. It's a tiny, 2-bed house. I can't cope with extra people I don't know for that long. (Flatmate's friends).

Do not go into my bedroom and take the clothes that are drying in there out to hang on the line. I don't care if it's bad for my asthma, I do not want someone I met two days ago wandering into my room and handling my smalls.

If your friend is busy working at the weekend take your daughter out for the day. Do not stay in the house and talk AT me all day, especially when I'm trying to read. I want a day of rest, not a headache. You may love the sound of your own voice. I do not.

Oooooh! A Discussion of the Day!

Kind of hoping that someone else will start a 'hints for hosts' thread now... I think there are a few of us who'd appreciate some ideas for how to put guests off...

...my BIL pulled a blinder by 'doing dinner for the kids', but only his. Ours had to make do with whatever I could find lurking in the bottom of my handbag and then a Ginsters sausage roll from the crappy corner-shop. I certainly haven't darkened their door since.

They live in huge house, in a lovely town with a gorgeous beach. And are never bothered by overnight visitors. Coincidence? I think not!

do not darken my door again claiming you want to visit our mutual relatives who are staying with us, then proceed to hog the remote because you want to watch a 4hr only fools and horses marathon while not talking to any of us.
don't then sit and text every sodding person on your mobile while still ignoring our existence. then after saying nothing to anyone for 5hrs dont make your first attempt at conversation along the lines of, i know you're going to the shop for bread buns for lunch, but i dont want sandwiches, i want a pastie, some monster munch, chocolate biscuits, a cake (to himself) and a fucking magnum. then expect me to pay for it all when you've already ate all the nice goodies i bought in for the guests i actually had staying here.

Love all your posts, here's my list:
1 When I cook you a homemade pizza from scratch, Having already made you a full roast dinner, do not say "we don't eat junk food"

2 ditto the previous poster if you bring one bottle of wine for a 3 night stay do not take it from the fridge and drink the lot.

3 Do not apply the full force of your 24 stone to the stair gate.

4 Likewise the toilet, if it now wobbles since you used it, i'm sure it was an accident, but please let us know.

5 If the dgc's have made you a birthday cake please do not take the piss.

6 Real help would be much appreciated, reading the gc's a book putting then to bed would be lovely, taking everything out of the dishwasher and leaving it on the side is not helpful.

:o sicilian

I thought of this thread today when I went to make up the spare bed for the next set of visitors and realised the last set had taken the window handle out of the frame. I'm sure it wasn't their fault - it wasn't screwed in very tightly - but you could have told me!

Do not announce that you don't have time to wait for the £20 joint of beef to roast and instead decide to prepare your own meal meal using the ENTIRE fridge contents leaving us with nothing but a rather large amount of beef for the rest of the week.

Do not wait until we go to bed, drink 2 bottles of wine, 3 cans of beer then disappear off into the night leaving our front door wide open whilst our children sleep upstairs.

Do not offer to cook then proceed with, what shall I cook? How should I cook it? Where are the pans? How do you turn on the oven? etc. etc. It'd be easier to cook it my bloody self.

Don't visit your daughter and her partner, both of whom, work full time and study part time, then bark at them over breakfast: "you really should be making more use of your garden, I can't beleive you don't grow your own vegetables"

Oh and do not fart on my brand new sofa when you know it makes me feel ill, especially dirty loud wet sounding farts that you find absolutely hilarious... I don't.
Saying 'I can't leave the room everytime I need to fart!' doesn't excuse you, you really could if you had any manners.
Its my house, my rules, my sofa... Oh and everything you do makes me feel ill, farting is just the tip of the iceberg.

do not put a roast lamb and spuds in dripping into the newly cleaned oven without a cover of some sort. Especially if your hostess has just returned from hospital, having given birth 6 hours previously.

At 10am the next morning, do not stand and watch the hostess clear away your breakfast dishes (now 21 hours since birth of grandchild)

Do not tell your family you will be there for lunch, then arrive at 2:35 and say you wont eat the (now ruined) food as you had a pastie in the market on the way here.

DO NOT:

announce that you want to wash your clothes, dump our dirty clothes out of the washing machine, wash your own clothes and leave our dirty laundry in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Go and buy a punnet of strawberries and a punnet of blue berries for your self, nothing for my two children (1 and 3), sit in the car and stuff your face with them while I get the children in the car and then offer me one strawberry. When I indicate that my children love Blue berries, don't eat all but twelve (infront of them) and then SHARE the last 12 with my 3 year old (3 to him, 9 to you)

after having stayed for 3 days, unannounced and not having contributed anything at all - when asked if you are staying for a meal which your hostess has to buy food in for specially - which is in one hours time - say "I don't know, does it matter?" when you have just been told that your hosts needs to know whether to get enough food for you or not.

Do NOT make your hostesses 3 year old cry repeatedly by repeating the same behavior - especially when you are asked to stop. When this request to stop is repeated more forcefully, do not respond by saying you are "toughening him up"

Do not, when it is made very clear that you are not welcome again - respond by texting your hostess that she is self pitying and blames everyone else for everything.

Bumptious the thing about meals drives me mad too. Who cooks enough for four extra people at each meal just in case they decide to stay?

Please don't come down and wash your hair in the kitchen sink in the morning, the bathroom is right next door so very easy to find, and we find that toddlers get very distracted by this sort of thing at breakfaste time.

When you come down the next day rather sniffily to use the bathroom instead, it would be a good idea to come in pjs or a dressing gown, rather than fully dressed to your shoes. There are two people who need to get ready for work, and knowing that you're taking so long because of the need to get fully undressed and ten fully dressed again (while toddler says "i need a wee!") does not create a peaceful atmosphere around the breakfast table.

If you say you are arriving at x o'clock, do not assume that because your host is on maternity leave she will be in when you arrive at x minus an hour, and then stand on the doorstep in the rain grumbling instead of going back to one of the many coffee shops you passed on the way to the train station.

Do not sit on my sofa and ask me for a cup of tea when I am 8 months pregnant and have spd

Do not hog my laptop/iPad AND remote control for the entire evening so you can play games and watch tv.

Do not wear great clunking heals at 9pm on my wooden floors when you know my kids are sleeping.

Do not then expect(I know right) me to then bend over to remove said boots because YOU have a bad back

This is MIL(whom I actually get on with after wine) who cut my wedding cake, opened wedding gifts, used DP as a taxi service(for relatives on wedding day), told us(on wedding night) we were shit parents and disrespected her house. After she woke the kids after screeching her fathers funeral songs with all her sisters at 2am. Won't forget our wedding night.

She now stays in a hotel when she visits though.

Don't wipe you bottom on the hand towels, use toilet paper.

happybubblebrain

the green face is for pukey, btw, NOT envy