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.

dont arrive and announce you are on a diet where no bread/pasta/potatoes are allowed.

tell your host if one of your children regulary shits the bed.finds it a few days later on top bunk.

obey the no eating rule in living room,finds melted flake on sofa.

do not wear hosts slippers

do not wear your usual wooden clogs as slippers as you do at home.
we live on the third floor of an appartment building with wooden floors and the house shakes with your steps.
we have lovely cosy felt slippers you can borrow...

Please note that every time we visit your house when we leave the room is as we found it except i have stripped the bed, placed it in the washing basket and folded the duvet. Remember this on the day you leave me, when you dont even make the bed, your wet towel is thrown on it and there are a weekends worth of cups and glasses on the bedside table!

Great thread lovelybertha. Can't help thinking that people shouldn't do points 2 to 7 in their own house. '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'. - Why?

Please do:

1. Feel free to start your meal whenever
2. Put your feet up (if without shoes/smelly feet)
3. Help yourself to drinks during meal - you have been invited to do so 85 times
4. bring flowers/wine for your hosts
5. At least pay for what you and your greedy boyf ordered when YOU wanted a takeaway. Paying for the entire thing would be even better

Please do NOT

1. Do any of the horrible poo related things noted here - including: do NOT take 40 mins in the bathroom and leave a foul smell when you know I am about to bathe my baby.
2. Moan about cold plates - there are 15 people eating and we are having hot and cold food (salad) on the same plate.
3. Keep saying there is nothing like your own home when you are staying in mine.
4. Read the Sunday paper I have just been out to buy - especially when you want to do so on toilet

6 Bring one bottle of wine and 4 cans and drink them before you drink all of my xmas supply in 2 nights.

DO NOT use my hairbrush

OMG yes dolldoops especially when when said precious dc have eaten the same things a week before. They are not being good/ well behaved if they are on the 5th choice of meal - especially if other children are tucking in without a fuss.

Peetle, that is entirely acceptable, and I have been known to do the same. It's a world away from walking in, criticising the music as the first thing you say (so not "thanks for having us", then), and then actually changing the CD.

TBH the entire visit was horrific, lest that sound petty, but it doesn't translate to a set of rules.

Loved reading some of these.

Now to add a few of my own:

1. If you do have to sleep on the dining room floor in a sleeping bag, please wear a dressing gown when you get up. Especially if you sleep in just your Y-Fronts. No matter how well endowed you are, I really don't want to see it first thing in the morning.

2. If you wet the bed please tell us so we can change it. We won't be mad, we know you've got problems (although wearing a pad would be considerate) and it give us a chance to rescue the mattress before it's ruined.

3)Don't just hand your cup to the hostess when she walks by. She's not a bloody waitress.

4)If the hostess has to spend time at the hospital with a sick baby, don't get the arse baceuse she's not at your beck and call for a lift home. In her own car. Using her own petrol. When you have a six figure bank account.

Finally:
Going down the Co-op is fine. I don't mind. Really. But when you buy loads of food which we don't routinely eat, please don't buy it, stick it in my fridge and then go home having failed to eat it. Not only do I struggle getting my own stuff in, I have to work through your leftovers.

at 'behaving like a wolverine'

Do not look aghast at a picture on the wall, before asking in ringing tones, "Why have you got THAT on the wall?" When your hosts reply, reasonably, "Because we like it!", do not look surprised and go, "Oh."

(I am guilty of this one in my defence I was 11, said picture was a life-size print of a nude girl (photo not arty painting-type) and I had been used to staid pictures of flowers and landscapes at home. Still cringe when I think about it, though :o

A friend of mine told me that being a good hostess meant making your friends / family feel at home when all you wanted them to do was to f off home..
but still some to take the

Don't
Take the last bananna out of the fruit bowl and feed the whole thing to your child while your host's child is asking for some too.
Hand the host the full breakfast with all the trimmings back saying 'actually I have my eggs cooked on both sides' !!
Look through your host's cupboards for something to eat after just been given a full breakfast.
Make yourself extra toast with marmalade leaving a mess and never asking if anyone else wants some.
See that there is only one teabag left and say "I'm having that then"
Lay across the kitchen sofa when there are 3 other people to accomodate.
Smoke in the hosts spare room / bathroom. Fag stubs float!!!

Phew I think I need to have a drink calm down

Love this thread

Please do not:

• arrive with one £2.99 bottle of wine and then proceed to drink about 2 bottles worth of (your host's) wine every night of your 3-night stay
• use your host's laptop for up to 5 hours at a time in the living room
• leave your boots in front of the front door every day, placed perfectly for host to almost break her neck on
• leave all your nutritional supplements all over the

bloody kitchen worktop

• block the toilet and then go out for the afternoon
• buy a pudding for dinner (after being asked to, this is the same houseguest who drank us out of house and home for 3 days) and then laughingly crow about how it only cost a quid

And my personal favourite (not):

• don't phone your (daughter) host at 10pm the night before you are due to arrive for a 4 night stay to announce you will be staying with your sister-in-law instead, and not even acknowledge that this might put your host out somewhat. Your host and her DP spent days cleaning, shopping, menu-planning, baking brownies, making up beds, booking time off work and steeling themselves emotionally for your visit. That was a pretty awful thing to do

Sorry, but at deathcat

sorry, another at deathcat.
pictures please

I like "behaving like a wolverine". I know exactly what you mean.

When staying for the weekend and going out for a fancy dinner, do not offer to pay for the wine, proceed to order two £60 bottles of wine especially when the £20 one would have more than sufficed and then fail to stump up any cash, including tip you tight bastards leaving the host and hostess to pay for a meal that then costs almost two month's worth of food shopping. This actually happened to my DSis but I was still as it was a close family member.

Do not invite over 15 people over for a party in the house where you're a guest. Especially when the hostess has given birth to her first baby 5 days earlier and had almost no sleep.

Do not organise another party 5 days later when politely asked not to invite people to the house where you're a guest, it may result in the visitors being told to politely piss off so the hostess can get some sleep, breast feed her baby or get a shower.

The culprit here is my brother.

Don't arrange to go to your mum's for Sunday lunch at 1pm with your new girlfriend, then turn up at 4pm without a phone call or explanation. You'll find it particularly rankles when you're staying in a hotel half a mile from your mum's house and could have turned up at any time.

When your stepfather then gently remonstrates with you about how lunch has gone dry on the stove and you're being a bit rude, don't pitch a full 'I don't need another father' hissy fit and storm out, then refuse to speak to either of them. You're 30, FFS, and there's no need to behave like a teenager.

Do not keep sneaking off to the loo to snort great big lines of coke. You will just sound like a boring fecker when you come back. And if you have to take cocaine when at friends for a quiet dinner, then you probably have quite a serious habit

This is truly shocking. I thought my BIL was a rare breed exhibiting this kind of behaviour!

In fact, I wonder how many of these my BIL is responsible for

Not me, but it happened to someone I know.

Do not house sit at your brother's small holding and then sell all of the produce and keep all of the proceeds, finish off every last item in the fridge,freezer and cupboards and then bugger off before your brother gets back home.

excellent, my favourite ranty topic.

rule no 1: when you come to stay with your family, pack some stuff. Don't arrive with NOTHING and say 'oh we'll just borrow yours'. Don't assume we have spare waterproof jackets, wellies, gloves, car seats, swimming costumes, for all of you.

And my favourite: when your children get up, you get up. Don't shove them out of the bedroom for us to look after, and go back to sleep for two more hours. And no, it's not cool to say 'I'm going to take a nap' while I am slaving in the kitchen cooking your roast dinner.