Care to share the oddest thing house guests have done in your home this festive period?

[CharlieWeasleysWife]

We've had many guests over the festive period and most have been an absolute delight. However, have just waved off a few of DHs friends and they:

Removed phone chargers and toiletries left in the guest room/bathroom and taken home

Used (a used!) dish cloth to wipe their face then replaced on the sink

Complained we won't allow scary/violent TV until our young children are in bed

WTF?

Edited for typos

I hope you take some with you if your loo roll consumption is that high?

Dogs are not like children.

The sub debate about flannels / facecloths on here has been peak mumsnet - multiple people dogmatically explaining the presence /absence of said fabric squares in hotels / guest bathrooms with added "this is my way of cleaning my face and I can't comprehend that other people are choosing to do it differently/ wrongly"

Didn't you get in touch and point out that they had taken it "by mistake" and ask them to return it?

How do you wash if not with a flannel?

I have these really useful things called hands.

It was a day visit for 4-5 hours and my MIL often leaves the dog for this duration when she plays golf, so this was no different. Your dog may be well behaved and I would likely welcome a dog that was. However her miniature sausage dog is hyperactive, bounces on laps, jumpy, and has no recall. As well as this my MIL doesn't relax when she's with her and mid conversation will leap up and go to see what the dog is doing. So it was a firm no from me for Xmas day, and as we were hosting that was our choice.

Im newly disabled and whilst i wait for my riser recliner chair my son builds up the sofa end with a booster cushion and other props. I hosted a curry party and came back to find a lazy arse teenager sitting in my spot. Even more infuriating was his mother didn't tell him to move.
I was fuming. I nearly died last year and the vast majority of these relatives sat on their arses whist i cooked and served.
Not happening in 2026 although ive done it for 26 years. No one offeted to wash a plate!

I have a dog and it's not normal.

Why yuk? They can be washed....

I use washable make up remover pads , a fresh one each day. I have a net bag to wash them in.
I am somewhat traumatised by the permanently soggy, damp smelling face cloths draped over the sink of my youth, my mum still has one !

I like dogs, but we don't own a dog, so there's extra cleaning once some dogs have been round, and it's not convenient to have a dog around with a house full of guests.

DB would act all put out when we said he couldn't bring his dog. Tough luck. If we decided no kids it would be no kids. No hats means no hats. If you're a guest in someone else's house you don't get to make the rules.

Dear god, this with fucking bells on! Keep returning to this thread in hopes of a few more posts in keeping with the OP’s original idea, which promised an entertaining chat about houseguests.

Instead it’s reams of facecloth vs flannel, hotel bickering, fanny and feet wiping, and people literally giving step-by-step accounts of how they wash their faces 😂. Worst, most boring thread derail ever.

I was once a horrible guest and I don't really have an explanation. I was staying with a friend and after dinner we opened the one bottle of wine I'd brought.

A Mighty Thirst then consumed me and I suggested she open another bottle, then another. I have no idea what came over me. Honestly I may have even demanded a fourth bottle. They just seemed to be opened then immediately emptied. My wine had come from the supermarket and hers in sober hindsight was probably far more expensive as she collects wine. She is also incredibly polite and should have told me to fuck off but didn't.

I woke up in the morning and feeling like death warmed up realised I was already two hours late for the conference I was there to attend. I jumped in the shower and when washing my hair noted it felt really soft. I got out of the shower and suddenly got a flashback glancing at the shelves of toiletries of drunkenly rummaging through them and deciding to test out her very expensive hair products.

Of course they were then smeared all over the pillow cases.

I apologised profusely and sincerely to my friend. I was very embarrassed, think I'd lost the run of myself being away from the baby and not used to being in adults company anymore. Or whatever I don't know but I was very embarrassed.

She was lovely and about it and invited me down again, this time with baby and husband. She is a fantastic host, the house is always spotless and she buys in nice breakfast food especially. We took her out to dinner and the next day went shopping in the town and picked up some nice gifts for her. My husband was with me but paying not attention to any of this.

I thanked her when leaving, invited her to stay with us anytime and told her we had left some gifts for her.

The journey home took several hours and then we didn't immediately unpack. I opened the boot and was immediately confused by the sights of a gift bag with a couple of bottles of wine, chocs and some nice house items. My husband saw me pause then yelled "oh I meant to say! When I went back in to grab something I noticed you had left your shopping behind so I grabbed it. Lucky." I stood there staring at him in horror before taking out my phone to text my friend and tell her to stop looking for the invisible gifts I'd left for her.

Not over the festive period, but while in the US I once invited a friend to stay over and she stripped the larder of anything she fancied to take home. Coffee pods, candy, wine, treats of every kind, and I didn't know until after she'd left

On asking later I was told "Ooooo something came over me" so that's one taken off the invite list

a guest came for dinner, gave us a bottle of wine. Then regifted it to someone else at the meal when they were leaving. When I mentioned it they said “we brought two”. No they definitely did not

Depends on how often you crap and if you have ibs or not. Someone people aren’t clean within a few sheets.

My sister would always use a whole toilet roll every day. Usually one would last me AND my children around 3 or 4 days. I couldn’t figure it out. She would also take full rolls of toilet paper from cafes/restaurants and put them in her bag which she thought was completely normal when I saw her do that the first time and asked her what on earth she was doing.

ps i have to use a face cloth. When. I was younger my face was pretty oily and just using hands didnt clean me properly. It felt horrible when we went to stay with other people and I had to just use my hands and sometimes cold water.

My MIL wiped what resembled a massive snot on the wall next to the bed! Absolutely vile! She’s a heavy drinker and has also been known to have night terrors and scream in the night!

IMO wet muslins, microfibre cloths etc that people are mentioning ARE flannels. They’re for the same use.

Apologies because I have not RATFT but I have read most of it.

Has the mystery of the screwed off door handle being solved?

Get a toothbrush cover. They’re about £1 and also stop your toothbrush collecting up any other detritus from wash bags to later go into your mouth 🤢

ooh - they sound good - please can you share a link?

I take off my makeup with a wet wipe. I usually only wash my face when I'm in the shower, but if I wanted to do it in the evening I'd wash it the same way I wash everything else - with soap and my hands. I haven't used or owned a flannel since I was a child. In my head they're something from that era - a weird thing we had, for no reason that now seems to make sense, in the eighties. I've seen them supplied in a UK hotel precisely once, and thought it was odd. As for them being wet - well, sometimes you come back from a trip with wet swimwear, right? You put it in a plastic bag. On just roll it up inside clothes that will be getting washed when you're home.

They ended up kipping at my house as she had fallen out with her husband on a night out. She put my new my new trackie bottoms on and sneaked out the house the next morning. They had been admiring them the day day before. DS had wee'd on them that morning. I put them in the washing pile ready to put in the next wash. When i went to get them they had gone.

Ex partner said oh he saw her putting something on. So I rang her up and told her well I hope they stink cos John wee'd on them. I get wanting to borrow something to go home in. But you ask you don't take something out the washing pile because you like them and sneak out. I am no contact with this person now she's a narcissist.