Does your mum bring bags of random shit to your house?

[whyeyeeyeeyeeye]

I swear DM can’t walk past a charity shop or a tat shop without buying something. She doesn’t care if it’s age appropriate for DC, in good condition if it’s for any of us, whether we’d like it, whether it’s worth the £…it’s infuriating. I’m just re-donating bags and bags of stuff after every visit. She even sends parcels of this in the post because we don’t live close. Today received 3 T-shirts for the kids in sizes way too big, a recipe book stand with splashes of someone else’s cooking on it, a 2024 diary and a kids’ game with half the pieces missing. I wish she’d just put a fiver in an account for the kids every time she got the urge. Or even just donated the money to the charity!

No, although it did drive me nuts when MIL used to turn up with tonnes of DH's childhood stuff and try to dump it on us when we had two kids in a two bed flat and they were two of them in a 5 bed detached house. I know you don't need it but we don't have the space!

My mums the opposite. She will sneak stuff out of the house to bin 😂😂

A bar of soap she has used 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

This one I think is in you as you left all that crap in her house.
You should just tell her everything still there can be thrown or offer to come and get it all one day

My mum does this too, and bags full of junk food for me and the kids. One time she loudly and conspicuously bought over hand me down clothes from her friends granddaughter for my DD whilst I was hosting a birthday party and had guests over which I found quite embarrassing. It made me look like I was really struggling and I was probably quite rude in equally loudly insisting I had no room and would throw them away. She hasn’t passed any clothes on since :/ I think she means well but it makes me feel like the poor relation.

Why would she..

My mum is dreadful for this. She volunteers in a charity shop and she brings things out of bags saying ‘can you believe they we’re going to throw this away?’ Invariably, yes I can believe that because it is broken/dirty/obsolete etc.

It was worse when the DC were babies/toddlers as I’d get clothing aged 8-9 and older for them to grow into. She once brought round a 4ft high light up snowman when we lived in a v small house. That went straight to Oxfam. It’s exhausting.

I am sorry we made you feel sad. The difference between you and my Mother is the last sentence of your post. Your children have told you what they want, and you listened.

My mother once bought a broken-down play set. A HUGE wooden one, that had a large attached tree house with a spiral staircase up, monkey bars, sandpit, slide and swings. She had a local farmer deliver it while I was at work as a 'surprise'. When it was new I bet it was a thing of beauty.....

....... but It was a health and safety hazard as it was terribly weather damaged, paint peeling, the metal fixtures had rusted away the wood had rotted through in most places. A large part of it collapsed while the farmer moved it in.

I don't have kids. I am staunchly and always have been childfree by choice.

I don't even have neighbours that have kids and the thing was massive took up 90 percent of my garden (and stank of wet rotting wood)!

She had decided it was a great 'do it up' project for me to get into and I could sell it for a profit. She didn't talk to me for nearly half a year when I said I didn't ask for it, need it or have any inclination (or the tools) to get into woodworking!

In the end, it cost me £170 to have it removed, £170 I didn't have at the time. I cried for a week while I tried to sort the whole thing out.

The list of other things big things that actually cost me money

A very unwanted banged-up Nissan Cherry (I was 22, a student who could not afford to run a car, had no inclination to drive and couldn't afford lessons)
The most ugly blue-mottled velour sofa you have ever seen, which has a mouse nest in it 'but it was a bargain The house had to be sprayed as we were all getting bitten by some sort of bugs after it arrived.
Told a neighbour it would be ok to stay at our house as we live near an airport - we were actually abroad and they broke the latch/handle/frame of the front door trying to get in. (and got in a very bad-tempered argument with us that we should cover their airport hotel cost that went on for months)

Luckily we have now moved away so unexpected removal vans turning up at the door is a thing of the past. Or people dropping things on the driveway as my Mother has told them I would 'love it' and they can' just drop it off' there.

I think you must be my sister 😆😆😆 There is definitely something territorial in it.

I mean, it’s possible she does it out of love but I think what I wish she would take note of is that I don’t receive it as a loving act but actually the opposite! She gets her satisfaction and I know she tells her friends about how much she buys for her grandkids but not to listen when I ask her not to is not loving.

My dm is of the WW2 generation who saved everything for obvious reasons but haven't been able to lose the habit. She will carefully wrap up and put into the fridge half a cooked potato or a small cooked carrot. She has inherited a great deal of sentimental items with little financial worth which is all in boxes so she doesn't get any pleasure or use out of them but can't bring herself to throw it away. If she gives it to me and I chuck it that's fine because I did the disrespectful thing and not her.

I have some items that aren't out all the time but have a value to me and I look at/use them periodically. They are in a box labelled "bin when I'm dead". I don't plan to leave much behind for dc but what I do leave will be labelled toy make it easier.

As for her house - it’s covered on every surface with tat (ornaments) but not like nice collectibles where for years she’s been trying to get the set or things passed down in the family but random shite from charity shops that holds no value or sentimentality.

She moved out of the house we grew up in a couple of years ago into a small apartment and getting that house clear was an emotional rollercoaster (for her) and an absolute gleeful chucking spree (for me and my siblings).

My dad used to do this, he loved a boot sale/ auction/ charity sale and would buy all sorts of stuff for ds.
But it was utterly his love language (he had an incredibly hard childhood and didn't know how to tell you he loved you) and a way to show he thought of you and cared. My ds adored this, and a lot of his memories of his grandad will come up as 'remember that time he bought me a trombone' or similar and from a young age understood that we thanked dad for whatever he gave us even if it was useless/rubbish/something you never wanted since it gave him such pleasure.
My brother otoh wouldn't take anything and was pretty rude about it and I know it really hurt dad who was genuinely doing his best to be a grandparent

My mother used to scour the charity shops for baby items and at the beginning they were mostly useful and appropriate, but as her mental health declined the choices became weirder and inappropriate to the point of being rather baffling at best and sometimes in a terrible condition. And if I didn't show appropriate delight at receiving these "treasures" I would get into terrible trouble with my Dad. And she would keep buying red clothes, I hate red, and it really did not suit my red haired baby. Fortunately it stopped when she was admitted to hospital.

MIL does this. She forces stuff on us that she doesn't want herself because she can't bear to throw anything away. Unfortunately OH has inherited it from her so they do this bizarre dance of passing stuff between them with neither of them wanting whatever it is - old curtains that are sunbleached, massive heavy bird feeders when we have no trees to hang them on, shabby furniture, bits of 'useful' wood... OH insists that we accept it but when I say I don't want it it has to be offered back - and so the dance begins!

When my dc1 was first born my mum did bring up all the old baby blankets, every toy she found in charity shops... but she's pretty sensible so that has reduced down A LOT and now she usually asks before buying.

She also picks up new clothes for them which are usually inoffensive or something they like, so I'm grateful for that.

My mum does this too.

I've never understood it.

My dad is obsessed with buying us storage - usbs, flash drives etc.

It's quite sweet, except he's bought SO many, that I can't tell what has what on it now. I just have dozens of drives.

My mums MIL was like this.
I remember her turning up with a large bag of tinned goods from her cupboard.
They were that old the contents had petrified 🤣
She was a funny old soul.
She always bought for every child, despite half of us being step kids, then our own kids. Her presents could be a hit or a miss but we always said thank you.
Her gd wasn't so polite unfortunately, I remember her (aged around 8) saying 'I didn't want that, that's awful ' in front of the poor woman.

My mum's terrible for bringing us bags of apples, plums and rhubarb from her garden. We grow all of these things ourselves in our own garden, more than we could ever possibly eat and we give huge amounts of fruit away ourselves from the end of our drive. She's essentially diverting her garden waste to us.

Also unwanted raffle prizes, of which there are many because she goes to lots of social groups. Dusty Dove gift sets, fake plants, packs of children's thermal gloves (I have no small children) etc all end up in a charity shop via our house.

The most memorable of her offerings was three packs of Tena Ladies left on the doorstep, not even in a carrier bag. She'd got vouchers to try them for free but doesn't need them. So obviously she thought they'd be well received by me😐

@PhilosophicalCheeseSandwich , the bit about the tens ladies did make me chuckle!

I’ve replied to this comment about ten times, but no, it’s not ‘on me’.

I have no idea what stuff she’s kept. As far as I am concerned I have nothing there. She’s moved house multiple times since I left - I do not have stuff stored there, she very promptly kicked me out at 18 and I never lived with her again.

Everything else she has ‘salvaged’ ie I’ve probably thrown it out 20 years ago and she’s decided to keep it (box of scarves a great example - I had sent to charity shop donkeys years ago and she’d snuck into loft as she felt they were in good condition) or it’s random items from my childhood which she has kept for sentimental reasons. I’m not going to her house to clear it of random baby stuff she’s been keeping for 40 years as it’s technically ‘mine’.

The most recent delivery was kids ski stuff from the 1980s. Yes technically in wore some of it, but that doesn’t mean in 2024 I’m responsible to store or dispose of it. I’m not storing all my children’s clothes to return to them on their 40th birthday for them to sort through.

I have repeatedly told her I don’t want any of it and if she finds anything she thinks could be mine just to bin it.

Ah, the reverse mugging. I have been a victim of this many a time. I’ve started getting pretty brutal about saying no/dumping stuff my mother shows up with straight in the tip pile.

I fear that this must be a stage-of-life thing for women. Will I be like this when I’m in my 60’s?

Love the phrase "reverse mugging". Thanks!

Last visit I was offered some tacky old Christmas decorations she was getting rid of ( light up snow men,,plastic santas etc), 2 decorative paperweights and a box of old teenage perfumes that used to set off my migraines.