Helpful Hints for Hosts

[Diamondback]

1. Please leave spare loo roll in the bathroom, especially if the current roll is down to two sheets!
2. If you ever intend to have guests, fit a (working) lock on your loo/bathroom door. You and your immediate family may not mind walking in on each other, but it makes me quite uncomfortable.
3. Please, please, please don't repeatedly invite me to stay, ask me when I'm coming, insist we fix dates, insist it's for two nights, not one, then when I arrive, act as though I'm inconveniencing you enormously and refuse me use of the bathroom - I can't wash properly in a mini-sink in the downstairs loo!

Please, when we have driven five hours to see you with our two little ones, don't let the first thing you say to us be about taking off our shoes when we come into the house. And yes, I do mind.

It's all going to go horribly wrong I tell ya. I started a thread v like this about 18 months and it became a refuge for high maintainence guests who expected Egyptian cotton sheets and spare robes and slippers as they provided for their guests. Me? all I wanted was an extra towel for my hair and a bathroom bin for personal stuff.

Make sure there are snacks and drinks freely available at all times, and don't make face if I eat slightly more than you think is acceptable. Hungry houseguests are not happy houseguests.

Ooh yes, do have a bin in your bathroom - this applies to bosses too. Oh no, actually don't - I love walking around your house with a sanitary towel wrapped in loo roll, trying to hide it in my hand till I get to the kitchen bin and hoping your DH doesn't bump into me and try to make conversation!

Please don't put a hot water bottle in my bed in July! Especially when I'm pregnant and being kept warm by this other being inside me. Yes Mum I'm talking to you!

Please don't ask if there's anything we don't eat and then serve up the one thing DH hates. Still talking to you Mum

If you're going to cook, that's lovely (unless you're my MIL), but please if you say there will be food at 7pm, for the love of gods please ensure there is food by 7.15 if you want to avoid howling 3yos and by 8pm if you don't want a howling or fainting NotCitrus!

(MIL forgiven here as there's always piles of fruit and other stuff to snack on. And with luck we can convince her to cook some ready meals!)

Guests - we have a lovely bathroom with a lock. The downstairs loo has no lock. If I explain this to you and you decide to use the downstairs one anyway, it's your problem if ds tries to go in and use the potty.

Don't invite us, spend a year talking excitedly about it, then when we arrive give the impression you can't wait for us to leave. Oh and then don't post random hurtful stuff on fb. Yes, im talking to you ex-friend.

Please don't ask us to come and visit, say how much you're looking forward to us coming to stay and how much you can't wait to have some extra people in the house... and then when we arrive casually mention that you would appreciate a financial contribution towards the extra electricity & firewood that will be used because we're staying with you.