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!

Ha ha! I had 5 kids too so you can only imagine my poor coat rack🤣

You'd be amazed though the number of Mums i have had coming up my path, warmly wrapped themselves but holding a baby in a thin sleepsuit only.

Parents always seem to be wearing the right coat for the weather but not always the same is true for the child.

I'm not a hoarder though and was always good at getting stuff out of the house when finished with - usually to these vans that come round.

Awwww love your comment, I really hope you are in fact my mil cos honestly the things I get coming into my home but unfortunately I know you aren’t mine 😂🙈 …. Well it’s not that I’m ungrateful, I’d just be more grateful if, it wasn’t toys or clothes that aren’t gunna fit the kids for a few years and I’m expected to store them 🙈😂😂 xx

YESSS!! My mum does this. This thread is giving me so much comfort

old teddies from 30 years ago that smell like attic

any clothes of hers that are out of shape in the wash or too small for her or she’s shrunken by hot washing. I’m 3+ sizes smaller than her

shoes she has bought and never worn (I’m 2 sizes smaller than her)

a random selection of flat lego bases with no lego that were covered in sticky something. My son is not quite Lego age yet

absolutely Any children’s clothes she’s found in a charity shop even if they aren’t a nice design or the right size or good quality or even a good price

food that she has bought but doesn’t like eg truffle marmite that she brought to ours and then we had to bin it

old school work

nahhh don’t feel sad. They are often just doing it to give themselves satisfaction or to pass on the guilt of chucking a bunch of stuff.
if they wanted to be kind they would really assess if the recipient actually wanted the crap (and realise they don’t) and then dispose of appropriately

Why do you put it in the garage? Why not throw it all out immediately?

Seriously that needs spelling out?!

Because I'm not a total bitch who unwraps presents, sneers over them, then walks to the wheelie bin with MIL in tow begging me to reconsider while I throw it in amongst the bin juice. Because I'm not going to say "stop the visit, you must leave at once and drive the hour home, leave the tea there, I need to take this total junk to the charity shop and see if they actually want it." Because I'm not going to suggest a mid-visit trip to the local clay pigeon shooting place and start frisbeeing bad dinner plates and shooting at them.

Because I want to actually have a relationship with other adults despite their differences and irritating habits, and you can't change other people. 🤷‍♀️

Nah, it's just another justification for their hoarding.

'I might need this some day'/ 'it's perfectly good'/ 'has years of use left' morphs into 'they might need this some day', etc.

It's a mental illness that is sadly hard to treat.

Yup!

They're just doing their hoarding in someone else's house.

Why do the items live in your garage for six months?

She goes home, you immediately take the crap to the bin or the charity shop, and then you have space in the garage and she is none the wiser.

I can't for the life of me understand why the stuff needs to stay until she stops asking about it.

Hoarding is a mental illness for sure but i don't think clutter classes as hoarding. Hoarding seriously fills your house to the point rooms are unusable and the hoarder becomes very emotional at the thought of letting anything go.

I think most mums on this thread were probably children of the 50s and 60s (i am a 60s child ) and were brought up to 'waste not, want not' 'never look a gift horse in the mouth' and all that.

Things were repaired because clothing was really expensive proportionate to income. Even kids' tights and socks were mended.

And there were tight times in the 70s and early 80s. Don't forget also, more people did trust to God and the church and wastefulness was almost sinful.

You never knew what hard times were around the corner. Hire purchase and credit was viewed with suspicion by many back then. If you did not have the money to buy outright, you went without.

Your Grandparents are likely born 40s? So war babies.

I think, with my generation, these problems with saving for a rainy day will die away.

I do have to say though in lockdown i never went near a supermarket for weeks! I emptied my cupboards and - omg - you should have seen what was there!!

A 60s shop! Evap milk, tinned fruit, condensed milk, every type of flour, sugar, spice and lots of old meat in the freezer. All the basics needed to make so many dishes!

It must be a subconscious thing. There were definite times in my childhood where we were very cold and hungry. So, when i see stuff on the news, i must assume all young folks are struggling!

Yes. Always.

My son commented last week that's he's never seen his grandmother arrive empty handed.

She'll arrive with a chicken, tins of tomatoes, old newspapers, and strange random stuff from her home she thinks we need.

@@Anisty why don't you just ask your DiL if the clothes etc that you send are useful?!

They might be, they might not. If they are and you stop, she might miss them. If they aren't, she'll be glad you stop.

Just ask, so you know what she wants!

Lol because reading this thread makes sense of a few comments she's made! And i never see my GD in any of the charity shop clothes🤣

I take pictures of my things and then given if wanted

Yes. I'm good at saying No thanks now. If it's something she's struggling to offload emotionally, I'll take it from her and bin/ recycle it for her. She's almost a hoarder, more frugal, keep it just in case. She has so much stuff that she doesn't need but struggles to part with it. My Grandma is worse but was born poor before ww2 so understandable.
My MIL loves a bargain and will buy it if it was on offer even if she doesn't want or need it, we usually end up with it. We've tried explaining that it's not a bargain if you don't keep and use it but she can't help it.

Oh right, fair enough! :D

I thought it was just my mum that does this!! She always brings something random, this week it was an air fryer that they 'don't need anymore', and a snoopy hairdryer that was mine in the 90s. Not a bad week. Other weeks it all ends up at the charity shop or on vinted. She means well and I'm well aware I'm very lucky to have a loving mum in my life. It does drive my DH bonkers though. If it really bothers you just say you're trying to sort and declutter, and you can't take more stuff now (repeat, repeat, repeat!!!).

I have a MIL who can’t pass a charity shop without buying us something and a DM who has kept everything from our childhoods.

I think a pp is right that their mentality stems from frugal times. They kept things for years - things people now would have a few years then toss out, like furniture, clothes, books.

In one way, I like it. I like things from my past. In another way, it sometimes overwhelms and stressed me out. When the kids were little I couldn’t really cope with it. The charity shop bags of helpful items are sometimes particularly unwelcome!

I was a child in the 60s too. We had no central heating, grew our own fruit and veg, wore clothes made by DM (born before WW2, as was my dad) and really, looking back on it, we children owned very little by way of toys, certainly nothing like the crates and boxes of stuff so many children have nowadays. We had paper to draw and write on, and paints, crayons, coloured pencils, markers, and lots of books. My family only ever had one car at a time, and we had a black and white TV until well into the 70s.

Hoarding isn't hoarding because the house is packed to the ceilings. Hoarding is an attitude of mind, an attachment or association of emotion to objects, or a tendency to use objects to deal with difficult emotions (acquiring objects, storing them, or giving them to others). It very often comes from trauma and loss - not always on a massive scale, but significant for that individual. It can have as 'straightforward' an origin as general anxiety or as 'complex' an origin as a horrific childhood.

A grandparent who habitually or constantly or regularly arrives with bags of tat from a charity shop is as much a hoarder as the sad people you see on TV crawling over piles of junk in their own homes. This is because the grandparent is seeking to address some emotional issue using objects instead of counseling. The scale of the hoard isn't the relevant element in hoarding. It's a very visible part of it when it gets to the proportions we are used to seeing on TV, but the problem isn't that a hoard has become massive or made someone's house unlivable. Emotion that hasn't been processed is the central part of it, not lack of material possessions in childhood.

I'm definitely not a hoarder and have no difficulty whatsoever parting with items. I don't think i'd ever have been constantly arriving with bags of stuff even if my DIL lived around the corner.

It really was the case that I remember how my DH and I struggled money wise as a young couple in our 20s just starting off with all those costs that you do have in the early years.

And i just thought today's young couples with babies would be struggling in the same way and any help with clothes would be gratefully received.

How wrong can you be!! I have learned a lot from this thread though and - if my DIL is struggling to clothe my GD, she can buy from charity herself and that will avoid tat and clutter.

I think people nowadays have more options for second hand necessities than I did back in the 90s when my DCs were born. FB Marketplace, specific neighbourhood FB Buy/ Sell pages, Vinted, eBay - even Amazon has deals - and you don't have to leave your house to shop.

I remember loving little gifts of books for the DCs, (new) board books, and later on story books - would that be an option for you?

I also really appreciated new or gently used parts for toys we already had like extra wooden blocks, extra track for a wooden railway, extra Lego, and small things like pavement chalk, bottles of bubbles, crayons, drawing paper pads, play dough...Just little things we tore through quickly as well as bits and pieces that enhanced the value of toys we already had and loved.

Honestly, i'm keeping away from the 2nd hand. The word that has really resonated with me on here is 'clutter' and that's a word that i have heard my DIL say. Their house is small so they don't want clutter. I think money to make their own choices seems to be what's most appreciated so I will be sticking to that from now on!

Thanks, all🙂

@mathanxiety brilliant post about hoarding

gl @Anisty! your Dil is lucky to have you :)

I think in terms of passing on clothes it's fine if you ask. I have a friend who has actively said that she'd be grateful for any boys clothes and shoes as her son gets through loads and is 3 years younger than mine. She is grateful for bags of tshirts and shorts etc. I think it becomes a problem when literally everyone passes on their stuff to you without checking whether you want it.

DM just visited with bags full of toys and clothes for dcs. I can't cope, especially so soon before Christmas. I'm trying to clear out and she just adds to the mountain of stuff. Of course I accepted it graciously but may need to hide it in a cupboard until new year. I am getting antsy just thinking about the hoards of stuff to come at Christmas even though I've said to her that we have more than enough toys and clothes. Im trying to see it from her pov, I think she must get a lot out of it. She actually sits and goes through each thing in the bag too. Is she seeking validation of some sort?