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?

Can I come? This sounds brilliant!
I'd change the times to 11.30 and 16.30 though haha

I iron socks!

But there is a reason (kind of...) my Ds1 has sensory issues around clothes and so I iron socks while still damp from the washing machine and try and stretch them out to make them as loose as possible for him and to get rid of any wrinkles which would freak him out.

It's funny how you get into habits that might seem strange though. I have just thought of another one... I take a flask of boiling water with me when we go out. Again there is a reason- DS1 (again the culprit!) has cold urticaria which means that he can have an allergic reaction to cold drinks etc. He loves a coca cola and I mix it with hot water from the flask as it's always too cold from the pub dispenser or whatever!! Last week one of my friends said; 'I haven't liked to ask- but why the fuck do you mix his coke with hot water?!'

Yes exactly- it is only now that I see my dad’s obsession with warming plates in the oven before a meal is odd.

Not just warming them so you’re not putting hot food on stone-cold plates- no no, these plates must feel like they’ve just been fired in Mount Doom. DH and BIL think it’s absolutely bonkers, and my sister and I think they should just concentrate on building up the callouses on their hands.

@FirstFallopians 0MG my mum does this! I swear you can hear the food cooking on the plates. And the obsession with having a hot cup for your tea/coffee too! She watched DH make himself a coffee once, took it from his hand and poured it down the sink because he hadn't warmed the mug. Bonkers

OK my family are definitely weird. I've remembered so many more now .

My mil also does the plating of her husband's food for him, which was mentioned up thread, he doesn't lift a finger and I've never seen him make food or his own drink in 15 years. He also has a habit of putting his headphones on to listen to music or an audio book when we are visiting. He sits in the same room but plugged in and doesn't speak to anyone or take part in what we're doing. I'm used to it now, it used to drive me bananas, now I just accept that he's more comfortable doing that and that's fine.

My mil adds water to red wine. I love her to bits but that always makes me cringe slightly.

Love this thread 😄My mil is a lovely lady who likes to leave used teabags on bits of kitchen roll on the draining board. Ditto banana skins. No idea why!

My Dm does this too!

Stew is not stew without lots of cabbage...

My MIL (who is lovely and amazing) will add the dregs of a bottle of wine into the “new” bottle of a completely different type of wine.

I know it’s all grapes in the end, but just let me finish that last swig of room temperature rosé before you throw it into the lovely chilled moscato…

Sounds amazing!!!!!'

I'm one of the weird ones as well then! We don't have a bin, just use a carrier bag which is hung on a cupboard door! I can't stand bins, they always get stains and spills on them that no one but me will clean off and instead of someone changing the bin liner when full, they just ram more and more stuff inside until you can't get the bag out of the bin and/or it rips. I got sick of the whole debarcle. No more bins! It's a good use of carrier bags and they get removed from the kitchen quicker when they're full (by me, of course....).

I hadn't thought about how weird that was until now.

Now that sounds lovely. I'd be the size of a hippopotamus though, if I had two tea breaks with a handful of biscuits every day.

My (lovely) ILs have some weird ideas surrounding bathing/showering. First of all it's a MASSIVE deal that requires making preparations for. No scope for thinking I'll have a shower now. You need to announce your intention well in advance, do they can prepare too. It always has to be at night, because after washing your hair you need to put a beanie hat on and get straight into bed, otherwise you'll die. No showering during periods either, it does something bad to your muscles. Any illness is attributed to your shower that was had 6 months earlier. It's weird as they are absolutely OCD about cleanliness.

They take half drunk glasses and mugs away if you leave them unattended for even a minute. Nip to the loo? Come back and your drink has gone. They even sometimes try to take my drink away while I’m sitting next to it, without asking, just because they think I’ve had it for a while. (I think the root of the problem is that I drink less, and slower, than they do.)

They’re lovely, but it drives me bonkers. And we always end up running out of glasses when they visit.

Mil always puts napkins out if we go for dinner but no one is allowed to use them. If anyone does use them it’s immediately commented upon. We’ve all learnt now they are for decoration purposes only.

But I never have to clean them!!

My ILs have been retired for 17 years from early-rising jobs (bin man and cleaner), but they still have dinner at 4 pm in the afternoon, as though they were going to bed at 8 to get up at 5 am. They will absolutely not change the 4 pm dinner time for anything and even though, if we eat out with them, we book the earliest of early bird dinner slots, they huff and puff about eating at the ridiculously late hour of 6pm, as though it's midnight on a school night.

Their sole bathroom is downstairs, just inside the front door and opposite the door into the sitting room -- and it has a rippled glass door, giving anyone passing, or in the sitting room with the door open, a fine, only slightly rippled, view of anyone on the loo.

They've redecorated many times since I've been with DH, and even replaced the door, but with another rippled glass door. MIL says the hall would be too dark otherwise. She doesn't appear to realise that people go to endless lengths not to go to the loo in their house, because it's really not conducive to a peaceful wee. One of my SILs once arrived and admired the other SIL's new haircut through the glass.😀

My parents used to do the 11am and 4pm tea breaks. So much so, when my mum would visit and Id ask her for a cup of tea, she'd first look at her watch to see if it was 'time' for tea!!! I'd say if you feel like one it doesn't matter what time it was....but no....it had to be 11 or 4 for the extra teas 😁. This was apart from breakfast and teatime teas which were a total different routine😂

My IL’s, who are generally nice people love a bargain, but then complain about it after.

They book and Airbnb for £80 a night near us, and spend two days listing all the things wrong with it, they know a lovely one that’s £100 a night I have booked for them previously, but would rather save £20 and complain. Rinse and repeat every time they visit.

Insist on buying a computer from CEX or Facebook, which never works properly/ is already old and scratched, and saved £50, but we will hear about it for months.

It’s not a money issue, they are well off.

MIL is apparently allergic to everything, until she fancies some of that thing and sneakily eats it when no one is looking. She has to get the chef out to discuss ingredients everywhere we go, all made up, I can’t figure out why.

The weirdest one is the need to take a cool bag / ice packs every time she goes to the shops. Even in winter, They live 2 minutes away!!

My IL have strange habits around bathrooms/toilets which makes me nervous when we stay. No locks on any doors, but there isn't even an unwritten rule that if the door is closed someone is in there and vice versa....so the door might be ajar, so you think safe to go in but one of them is going for a wee

And there's a full length mirrored cabinet directly in front of the toilet in the main bathroom to make you uncomfortable about watching yourself go to the toilet and paranoid that someone might come in!

My mum had a funny habit that she set her alarm clock for 6.45am every day despite never needing to get up at that time. I remember her complaining about a bad night sleep once and was telling me about waking several times, finally dropping off to sleep ..."and then the bloody alarm clock went off " ...and I asked her what for, and she started laughing and said she didn't know (both her and dad had been retired for a few years at this point and didn't have any other early morning commitments)

MIL is dead now, but before her demise when exchanging Xmas cards, everyone bought separate ones. So we had to buy one for his mum, one for his dad, one for my sister in law and a separate one for her hubby. Rather than 'to mum and dad at xmas'. 'To granny and granda at xmas'. No one is/was divorced.
Hubby's family also buy extortionate gifts for each other. Examples were hubby buying his sister a £400 watch. Sister buying hubby a sofa.
Thankfully this has calmed down a bit!

Oh I think this is quite sweet! May family is quite big on birthdays though. It's nice to make a fuss of people.

My DM used to insist that all curtains were drawn before the lights went on (hang over from her wartime childhood and the blackout). Fine in evenings, but on gloomy days in winter it made reading a ...challenge, when it was like midnight in the living room but not allowed any lights on because it was 'too early to draw the curtains.'

I love my MIL. She's bonkers but in the nicest way.

If she goes away at all, she packed a plate (even when she flew to South Africa). She brings one here when she comes to visit. Absolutely no idea why.

She also has several huge shelves fixed to her bedroom wall and stores all her clothes on them. There appears to be no system to this, so there will be a pile on one made up of leggings, jumpers, socks, pjs. No idea how she finds anything

On the other hand, my dad is absolutely meticulous about his clothes and how they're stored. They're not fancy or designer, but they must be hung on their designated hangers and in the correct order. Bonkers.

Does she use the plate when she gets to her destination?