Need to Vent!!!

[Adultsiblingsgaah]

Around 6 weeks ago my brother asked if he could stay with me and my family for a week or two. He lives abroad in a very cheap country and has an online business. The week or two has turned into a month already. He makes no contribution to the household and does nothing around the house. From around 8am, 7 days a week, he sits on my sofa in my only living room, "working" on his laptop. Apart from an hour in the afternoon when he does a beer run (4 pint cans of lager every day) he doesn't move until around 12.30am. I don't finish work until after 9pm 3 days of the week and 7.30pm on the other 2 days, I have ADHD and, I suspect (not diagnosed) autism. I need my living room back in the evenings!! As it's school holidays I'm also at home all day and it's doing my head in. I need alone time!! I've had an upset stomach the last couple of weeks and I suspect it may be stress from this situation. My DH knows that I need an hour to myself just watching crap something easy on TV before I go up to bed and he's been going up before me for a good few years, but it's nearly 11.30pm and DB has just opened can no. 3 (which is why I'm on here). He's also up and down like a fucking yo-yo in the evenings (every 20-30 minutes) to pee and vape. Not to mention the nights when he puts his bedroom light on whenever he feels like. We have those stupid glass bits at the top of all the doors, so sometimes get woken. He'll also flush every time he gets up in the night and uses the noisiest toilet. Even I use the downstairs toilet in the middle of the night and put bleach down rather than flush. He's completely oblivious to the noise he makes.

I asked DM to have a chat with him a couple of weeks ago to ask what his plans are. I was hoping she would do it while alone with him, but she brought it up in front of me. She asked him how long he was planning to stay and he said a couple of months!! A couple of fucking months!!! I half jokingly said that my adult DC pay us £200 a month each in rent. He answered in a non committal way. Since then not a fucking word!!

I don't want to ask him to leave as he's got nowhere to go in this country, and he's not making enough money to live on from his business. No one else in the family has a spare room and I think he's exhausted his friends' kindness over the years. Other family members are sending him links to jobs but he's not applying for anything straight away and then his applications get rejected because they're late and the vacancy has been filled. He's pinning everything on business picking up again.

I need to bite the bullet and tell him he can't continue to live here rent free, but I don't want to say that in case he starts paying rent and we won't get rid of him iyswim. DM, DSis and her DC are going on holidays in a couple of weeks so I'm hoping he'll go and housesit for a week.

If you managed to get to the end of my rant, does anyone have any ideas on how to nudge him to find somewhere else to live in a very kind way?

So you tell him the rent he needs to pay per month and put a time limit on how long he can stay.

You also lay down some ground rules. Tell him to put a desk in his room to work from there because the sitting room is for relaxing in, especially of an evening.

Tell him he needs to do his fair share of domestic work, cooking & cleaning. Tell him not flush the loo at night.

And you buy some blackout material to stick over the glass over his bedroom door and yours.

Couldn't have put it better myself. He may be your brother but he's a grown man who's taking the piss.

Yeah sorry OP but to coin a Mumsnet-ism it's time to put your big girl pants on and read him the riot act.

He's out in 2 weeks/ a month/ whatever grace period you feel like giving him.

During that time he doesn't take over the living room all day and evening, he can work from a desk in his room.

He picks up some housework.

If he doesn't agree he can fuck off tomorrow.

Brother or not he's taking the piss out of you. Can't imagine why he's exhausted the kindness and hospitality of everyone else he knows 🙄

@Adultsiblingsgaah why did he come to stay with you, out of interest

Thanks everyone. I know what I need to do, just too kind to actually do it.

For those asking about a desk in his room, he has the box room which has become a dumping ground over the last year or so. It has a wardrobe, a kallax storage unit and a bed, absolutely no space for a desk. There's still a lot of junk in there too, which I didn't want to clear out before he came in case he became too comfortable. He doesn't seem to care though 😡

What really pisses us off is he'll comment on household things that we are doing, says we're busy, but doesn't offer a hand. Today has really taken the piss - DS is outside cleaning his car with the pressure washer. DB said to me he'd asked DS if he was going to do my car too. DS told him he probably wouldn't have time (he'll be leaving for work soon). I suggested to DB he could do my car. His answer - "I don't know how to use the pressure washer." I told him DS could show him - he just grunted.

I'm going to have to sit him down this afternoon and make a plan with him, and stop being so fucking kind!!

@Prontehpronto he's been running his business remotely from the country he was living in. It's taken a nosedive and he originally said he was going to come back to look for a job and stay with us for a week or two. It's now 5 weeks and no job.

I feel your pain about your sitting room being taken over, I’ve had this problem for years and we have, finally, built an office.

Anyway, if he’s sitting on the sofa to work, could he sit on his bed instead? I think that would be my starting point. Or getting him to take his laptop to another family member’s house, a couple of days a week?

He may not like sitting on his bed working, but, like you said, you don’t want to make him feel too comfortable.

You definitely need to address the money situation though. He needs to pay his way in jobs around the house, if not in money.

Setting a time limit is a great idea too. This could go on for years!

@DustyOwl Your last sentence 😭

Sit down with him and say that you want him to work in his bedroom when you're there as you want the sitting room.

Say that he does his own cooking, washing and cleans up after himself.

Can he stop flushing the loo at night and as a pp suggested get some black out material over the window or wear an eye mask and ear plugs.

I'm going to sit him down this afternoon and give him until the end of August to find a job/improve the business and then he'll have to pay rent at the same rate as my DC from September plus pull his weight around the house more. I'll do some research and see if there are any of those office spaces where you can just rent a desk (not sure what they're called) around here.

I don't really want him to stay, but I can't see him with nowhere to go either. DM lives with Dsis and her DC and they don't have a spare room.

He ought to pay more than your children IMO

Don't forget the ground rules while he's living with you

I spoke with him. Asked him how much longer he was planning on staying, he said not too much longer. Told him that when he asked to stay a couple of months ago it was for a week or two and it's now been 5 weeks. Told him I didn't want to kick him out, but some rent and some help around the place wouldn't go amiss. He said he does the dishwasher??? FFS!!! I've done it every day for weeks plus cleaned the whole kitchen down, hoovered and cleaned around him.

Anyway, he's been looking at a workshop around 6ish miles away this week and he told me he'll take it and can just bed down there if he's in the way here. Toilet open to the room with a sink and no other facilities! Reiterated he didn't have to move out, just needed some space.

I feel so sorry for him. 50 years of age with nothing to his name. He came 5 weeks ago with a rucksack of clothes and bits and bobs and that's all he has to his name.

@DoIdriveaVauxhallZafira he doesn't have the money to pay much at all at the moment.

The other way of putting that is, he’s 50 years old, so if the best he can be arsed to manage for himself is a mattress in a workshop, that’s on him. Stop infantilising him. You’re getting a very effective demonstration of why he has nothing- because he’s lazy and has no motivation or standards.

I feel like their may be more to the story after @Adultsiblingsgaah latest posts (which made me feel for him a lot, too) but I do think he's doing a bit of that man trick of "Well, if I'm in the way I'll just go live under a rock. In the rain" trick

@Adultsiblingsgaah I think you need to spell out exactly what he needs to do around the house or it'll never get done.

@DoIdriveaVauxhallZafira I get that feeling of him martyring himself too, instead of thinking things through logically.

He's now told me he can move out tomorrow. There's a sofa in the workshop as well for him to sleep on. It has a shower, but like I said, the bathroom is completely open to the rest of the room. No cooking facilities.

Before he moved to the other country his business was doing really well. Then he met a girl out in the other country, handed the production of his product to a third party (he does all the business side, getting customers etc.) and moved out there. She's half his age and it's highly unlikely she'll ever be allowed to marry him. When/if business picks up again he plans on being out there a month and coming back for a week to fulfil orders. I told him that if I was looking for the product as a gift for someone I wouldn't want to wait 6-8 weeks for delivery (my adhd mind isn't organised enough to think about a gift that far in advance) and I would look elsewhere for speedier delivery. He doesn't think it will be a problem. And I think this is why he is where he is right now, because he can't see that what makes sense to him (being in other country with his girlfriend for longer than he's in this one doing work) doesn't work in the real world.

He says he's moving out tomorrow. It feels like a bittersweet win for me though.