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Original poster

Helpful hints for houseguests:

337 replies

lovelybertha · 29/08/2011 13:05

  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.

OP posts:
woowa · 30/08/2011 21:53

Please don't block both toilets with your poo when I am pregnant and ask me to sort it out. Hoping they never come back with their weird digestve systems.

Don't say to your host, pregnant by IVF, that "i've never thought IVF is a very good thing." Especially when you should not have known we had IVF, who told you??

All in one one night stay. Really hope they nevr come back. I wouldn't say it about anyone else but these were beyond unbelievable. At least they brought their own duvet so they couldn't complain about ours.

TastesLikePanda · 30/08/2011 21:56

this message aspecially for DH

Do not excite your American hosts by announcing 'Tasteslikepanda would love to cook you a traditional english meal of fish and chips' when you know too fucking well I have never cooked fish and chips in my life, am not about to start in a strange kitchen and then have to look at the disappointed faces when I offer to make them bangers and mash instead...

ChocolateIsAFoodGroup · 30/08/2011 21:57

Do not use the fact that the children have 'separation anxiety' as an excuse not to do anything with them. The children are 4 and 16 months now - you can at least play with the four year old.

Do not expect me to pay $400 for a week's groceries cos you decided to buy up the whole shop (including things we already have but you couldn't be bothered to check for first)

Do not follow my poor, beleaguered DH around the house asking him to do things for you (mend my computer, buy this thing, fix this thing) when he has just got in the door and would like to see his wife and kids first. And maybe sit down for 5 minutes.

And many, many more..... Sigh. We are currently three days into 2 and a half months of three different sets of visitors...... Oh God, why???

dreamingofsun · 30/08/2011 21:58

if you invite yourself to house sit for 2 weeks whilst your relatives are away when they don't actually need a housesitter:

  1. Please say thankyou and a bottle of wine wouldn't go amiss
  2. do no invite your partner, all their family and their families friends
  3. volunteer to do at least a few jobs, eg mowing the lawn
  4. do not fiddle with the PC so that the colours are all odd and the homeowner has to spend ages working out how to change it back to normal
  5. if you are going to arrive at the most stressful point in a holiday - ie during packing/sorting house out do not expect your family of 6 to be fed, much better to buy a take-away (though obviously this does cost money)
  6. let the homeowner take their shoes off before you give them a long list of things that have broken when they return from their holiday
Popbiscuit · 30/08/2011 22:28

When your morbidly obese and thoroughly unpleasant 11 year old is caught helping himself to a whole package of cookies from our pantry you should deviate from your usual jellyfish non-confrontational parenting style and do something about it. When your similarly greedy and repugnant 6 year old is found to have squirrelled two-thirds of my daughter's Sylvanian Families collection into her suitcase you should make her return them and apologize, NOT pretend like you didn't notice and let her keep them anyway because my daughter was too polite (and shocked) to kick up a fuss.

While visiting and invited to attend our child's soccer game, do not allow your (inactive and lazy) children to complain that it would be "boring" and "annoying" to have to go and cheer on their cousin.

Thanks for starting this thread, Bertha. Highly therapeutic Smile

darksideofthemooncup · 30/08/2011 23:07

Please don't take a shit on the guest room floor.

cherrysodalover · 30/08/2011 23:19

I really hope the guests out there who choose to stay with 'family'( even distant family you have never met) time and time again( read have a cheap holiday) are reading this.

It is not on.
Go get a hotel like the rest of us- more than a few nights is not acceptable unless offered willingly by your host.

limetrees · 30/08/2011 23:44

  1. If you get drunk and shit in my toilet, somehow spirting thousands of drops of blood and shit all over my toilet (outside, inside and all visible places) - FGS wipe it up. I really don't enjoy that clearup and had to throw out a wooden toilet seat because of it.

  2. Don't arrive and immediately go out, returning only at a very late hour to use my facilities. And don't repeat the next day. I'm not a hotel and thought you came to see me.

  3. Don't wonder why I have refused all your subsequent requests/demands to stay.

isitmidnightalready · 31/08/2011 00:43

Do not offer to help carry the round when I was quietly offering two other people a drink out of the twelve in the group. And do not run up a bar bill of £27 pounds for said round while I am on the loo and expect me to pay.

Do not visit and pay not one single penny for anything whilst you are here, including meals out, then nip off for a quick walk and go for a meal on your own! And do a sharp exit when the bill for another meal out together arrives.

Do these people go on training courses to learn these tricks?

saffronwblue · 31/08/2011 00:44

Do not, having met DH in a youth hostel 15 years ago, arrive to stay in the week when FIL is dying. Having arrived, do not then sit about waiting for DH to return from hospital vigil each day to take you out sightseeing. While sitting about waiting, do not keep talking about how lovely your life is in the Carribean and do not keep asking me to make you drinks.

LineRunner · 31/08/2011 01:00

PorkChop, Who are these people to you??!

shelscrape · 31/08/2011 03:31

This is such a good thread!

  1. do not moan and grumble that your room does not have a hook for a dressing gown or that the mirror is not right for you. You ahvethe spare roon with a proper bed FFS
  2. Do not say " you used to keep the house so much tidier before you had DS"
  3. Do not announce at breakfast on Christmas morning in the presence of 5 yearold DS that you realised father christmas did not exist when you were 8 and then tell the whole story in graphic detail
  4. Get up before 11 am at least once, do not leave manky underpants in the bathroom and open the bedroom window if your feet are super stinky
  5. if you ahve been eating a gluten free diet for 6 years, but have gone back to normal food, it is polite to tell your host before he buys gluten free everything for you ... and you then have the nerve to say you won'ts eat it
MadamDeathstare · 31/08/2011 06:29

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MadamDeathstare · 31/08/2011 06:47

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Tortoiseonthehalfshell · 31/08/2011 07:38

If you are staying with your girlfriend's brother and his wife, neither of whom you have met before, do not arrive, ask 'what's this shit that's playing?' and as soon as the hostess goes out of the room to get you a drink, stop the music and rifle their CD collection for something more to your liking

merrymonsters · 31/08/2011 08:23

Don't wash your hair in the kitchen sink (yuk), especially when there are two bathrooms available. Same woman also walked around downstairs naked at breakfast time and kept 'worrying' that my brother might come downstairs and see her naked.

NorksAreMessy · 31/08/2011 08:46

what properly totally NAKED

oo-errr

Peetle · 31/08/2011 09:13

Tortoiseonthehalfshell - guilty as charged; I'm always doing that. However, I generally mutter it to my other half and cast an eye over the CDs rather than attempt to rectify the crimes against music that I encounter.

Another one: when we've made up a bed for your DCs on the floor of our (carpeted) loft and you've kindly brought some bedding, please make sure you take your scabby, emaciated old pillows home and not our nice, new puffy ones. Even if the DCs made the mistake you must have realised when you got home. It's like getting home with Bella Emberg rather than Cheryl Cole.

dreamingofsun · 31/08/2011 09:20

1.if you have an accident on the sheets whilst your host is on holiday try and wash the sheet

  1. and if you then wash yourself in the shower please clean the poo from the shower base
  2. please turn the tele off when you leave the house and do not leave it on for a week unattended - it uses electric and i can't help but think it could be a fire risk
  3. if you find the house to be immaculate when you arrive, leave it in the same state when you go - cleaning a house before and after unwanted house-sitters is no fun, especially when you hate housework
  4. find a better excuse than your bed/chairs give me back-ache so i can't visit, when you happily invite yourself to house-sit for 2 weeks whilst your host is on holiday
LadyClariceCannockMonty · 31/08/2011 09:38

darkside, Shock, Shock, Shock
But I want to hear the full story ...

abigailj · 31/08/2011 09:42

Haha redhotpoker - no 5 is just exactly what I experienced yesterday. You'd think that at 5.30am when they KNOW DC is a terribly light sleeper in the morning people would leave the bathroom door closed to muffle the flush a bit and make an ATTEMPT to sneak quietly around if they do have to go. Better still, as we say in Australia "if it's yellow, let it mellow".

iscream · 31/08/2011 09:46

Question. If you visit the same friends several times a year, but they do not visit back, because one of them is quite allergic to cats, is it wrong to continue to visit them?

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 31/08/2011 09:50

Just remembered a classic family tale. If your hosts are living in a van whilst they do up their house in rural Ireland, with no electricity/running water, do NOT get up early and merrily wash your waist length hair in the nearby well. It is their only source of drinking water.

dollydoops · 31/08/2011 10:30

If your PFB is an EXTREMELY fussy eater, consider bringing with you the food that he will eat, instead of rejecting multiple different food types on his behalf. (We're not talking strange food here- the DC in question was offered a choice of chicken, ham, cheese, bread, salad.) When he finally has a minuscule plateful, do not croon soothingly in his ear "I know it's horrible and you don't like it darling, but try to eat a bit just to be polite." YOU are not polite.

dreamingofsun · 31/08/2011 10:59

iscream - ask them and see what reaction you get. we have several families who visit us and we encourage this because we can't visit their houses - 1 has cats, the other lives too near our relatives. we are grateful they visit us

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