What’s a weird thing your In-Laws do?

[FirstFallopians]

I was thinking there about how my BIL maintains that all families are a little bit weird to someone else.

Thought he was being flippant but then I remembered that my in-laws keep their family toothbrushes and toothpaste in a drawer in their bathroom. If you need a bit of floss after Sunday lunch you need to stick your hand into a sticky, damp mass of plastic and bristles.

What slightly weird things do your in-laws do?

My in laws are very anxious around food, and it drives me mad. Lunch is at 1230, dinner at 5.30, MIL never snacks inbetween but is so hangry by the evening meal it’s never ever later. If we go out for dinner she is unbearable, god forbid the woman eats a banana! These times are non negotiable, when we had our DD and lived with them the meals got served at those times whether I was feeding the baby, expressing, settling her to sleep, whatever. Lunch couldn’t move! Always tea with lunch and immediately after dinner. Again, regardless of DGC or whatever, when they stay here they’ll make their post dinner cup of tea while we bathe the kids etc and then we come down to a cold cup for us that gets reheated.

Oh I could go on!

Where do I say that DIL is solely responsible for white washes?

MIL won’t buy a doorbell, even though she’s a deaf bugger and we spend ages banging on her door in the pissing rain, even when she’s expecting us, and then we have to call her to say “We’re at the front door!”. She says a doorbell - a regular one not a Ring one - would get stolen 🤷‍♀️

She also doesn’t have a solitary bin in the whole house. She uses a carrier bag hanging off the kitchen door. And if you forget about it and push the handle down fully from the other side the bag falls onto the floor and rubbish goes everywhere. But she won’t buy a bin because “they smell” (like the open carrier bag doesn’t!

Ugh that sounds like a nightmare!

Your colleague's wardrobe sounds just like mine 😂

Pickled red cabbage served on top of the stew was my mum's go to.

Given that these poo particles are so minute (i.e. completely invisible!!) I doubt they are doing much harm. It's probably natures way of exposing us to a bit of bacteria. There is no advice to close your toilet lid when flushing neither is there any advice to be hyper vigilant about your toothbrush.

Perhaps she thinks of you as family, rather than guests?

Hair shouldn't be washed in the kitchen ideally.
However, EVERYONE washed in the kitchen not so long ago when they had outside toilets and no bathrooms.

I had to look up eveningbread.
I live on the continent and you eat the bread you get in restaurants directly on your table mat, not on a plate, complete with butter.

'The continent' is a big place, with many cultures and customs (even if we make an assumption about which continent). You may need to be a tiny bit more specific.

"My MILs is a story about how DH as a teenager once got so drunk he tried to open the front door with a pound coin instead of his keys, I mean the way she tells it you’d think he was the only teenager to have ever got drunk 🙄 if she starts now I have to get up and ‘ go to the loo’ hide somewhere"

This is a bit like some best man speeches for really well behaved grooms where they just desperately try to find examples of the groom behaving badly.

@Gwenhwyfar for us "eveningbread" usually means sandwiches, ham, cheese etc. We daily have a hot meal and a bread-meal. My inlaws always had a hot meal at noon, bread in the evening. We (my family and most of our friends) have bread etc. around noon, sometimes with a salad or soup. We have a hot meal in the evening and then indeed bread is a sidedish 🤷🏼‍♀️

What's weird about that?
I mean I get that you're a gravy snob and you want one made from scratch, but packet food is really quite normal in the UK.

This was a thing when I was growing up. You'd be offered custard or milk and milk was the diet option. So it's old fashioned rather than weird.

"my grandmother always referred to her neighbour and best friend of 50 years standing as “Mrs Wilson”. "

People were more formal in the 'old days'.
My grandparents spoke to each other using the formal pronouns (equivalent of vous in Welsh) their whole lives.

Dissect every single journey. Which services did you stop at? Which motorway did you come on? So dull.

Stand up for the King's speech on Christmas Day.

I have various different loads - shirts, darks, intermediates, super darks for clothing suspected of not being very colourfast, jumpers, towels, bedding

My in-laws fully wash the dishes in hot soapy water before they go in the dishwasher. Not just rinsed, perfectly clean for the dishwasher.

They keep unopened, tinned food in the fridge.

My Dad does this! He says it's because he finds cleaning the dishwasher filter the most disgusting job in the world so he likes to make sure everything is clean before it goes in 😆

I would imagine it’s making out that packet gravy is special that the poster considers weird, rather than packet gravy in itself.

Not if you put the damn LID DOWN!!

My ex inlaws did this and she spent ages cleaning the dishwasher too like genuinely scrubbing it why? Everything that went in there was clean? I could understand cleaning it occasionally but ripping it apart scrubbing it "cleaning" the filters (nothing ever there) it baffled me

EXACTLY

What surprised me was my (old diagnosed) ex mil never put the toilet lid down I do (I have stupid cats so it became a habit before I learned about flying poo) she looked down on me because I did