Silly house rules

[tabbyH]

My husband has just emptied our kitchen bin. Apparently this means that I'm not allowed to put anything in it! Not sure what the time frame is until the bin is allowed to be used again... Does anyone else have any peculiar rules?

Skinit. Take the hint. She's trying to kill you.

When I was growing up, my dad liked to eat with only certain forks, although it was never communicated which ones, you were just supposed to 'know'. One day, after I set the table for lunch with apparently the wrong fork, he asked me was I "playing mind games" with him.....

Nobody is allowed to use the kitchen roll in my house, except for ME. If anyone wants to wipe something up, they have to use a washable cloth, which can be thrown into the washing machine and re-used. The kitchen roll is only to be used in extremis, eg. for wiping up cat sick, or for other functions when you really wouldn't want to ever use the cloth that wiped it up ever again...

I had to have words with my best friend when I caught her using kitchen roll to wipe up a splash of tea.

In my house I am disappointed if a single kitchen roll doesn't last at least four months.

Oh yes, and when my washing up sponge starts to look less than pristine, it gets demoted and becomes a surface-wiping sponge. I tear a corner off the demoted sponge so everyone knows which one is which.

Even sluts have rules.

Matching pegs?

Bed linen and towels DO NOT go into cupboards and drawers after drying, unless ironed and folded neatly.

Using a bath towel and hand/face towel of different colour/set when the its pair is available drives me crazy.

And I HAVE to have cereal with a teaspoon. At least I do not make everyone else do it too...

I do the matching peg, but not for specific clothes. Each item has to have the same kind/colour peg, and I do hang things up in an order, all pj tops and bottoms together, pair the socks and hang them side by side.

I also have to have all my coat hangers facing the same direction and all tops from dark-light, etc etc.......

Glad to see I'm not alone :)

Oh and towels need to be folded properly....

I suppose for thos of us who have lots of 'rules' we could just have one.

Everything must be done my way!

My garage is carpeted

Those of you who use coloured pegs are clearly weird beyond all weirdness - surely everyone knows that the only correct pegs are wooden ones!!

I do agree with the posters who say that the loo roll should be hung with the end at the front - but at the moment, I would settle for a new loo roll being put on the holder when the old one runs out, never mind which way round it's hung!

Dh puts a new roll on when needed, but can be a bit hit-and-miss about putting it on the right way, but the dses apparently have no idea whatsoever about what to do when the loo roll runs out.

Either they

1 - don't realise that you need a new loo roll

2 - don't know where these shy and retiring creatures live in our house

or

3 - can't work the complex and difficult machinery neccessary to change the loo roll.

Oh - and on the rare occasions when they do manage to stalk and trap a new loo roll, the old tube absolutely can't be put in the bin - it is just dropped on the floor, as if the effort involved in changing the loo roll has left them too exhausted to open the bin lid.

Your poor families. I wish I could fast forward and read the thread in 20 years time started by your daughter/son-in-laws.

"AIBU to find my MIL a total nutjob with her strange obsession with towels/kitchen roll/laundry/carpet/bizarre toilet-related rules?"

where do you find the TIME to worry about this stuff? I mean, you could be out having fun, or reading a book, or writing a novel, or just - you know - doing normal stuff instead of folding towels!

Shall I tell you how I do my washing? Stick a load on in the morning before I go to work. Come home, scrabble it all out of the machine. If it looks like it'll rain then chuck the big things over the bannisters and the small things on the radiators - if it's fine then peg it all on the line any old how with some pegs I've picked out of the flowerbeds.

When dry, shove in the drawers without ironing or folding or sorting in any way.

Skip off to have a life.

The duvet cover MUST be put on correctly (the duvet seams and cover seems meeting exactly).

The cushions MUST be plumped up every night before bed.

The remote controls MUST be placed on the coffee table (righ hand corner, by the candle)

If you open the curtains, straighten them - don't just fling them open.

Bins emptied every day.

Clean the hob of any splashes immediately.

Tuna tins must be rinsed before going into the bin.

Towels should be matching from the current set (so if the bath matt is green, use the green towels from the cupboard. Ditto the pink matt etc...)

The black smoke mark to be wiped off the glass of poncy candles.

Socks to be paired together on the clothes line / drier.

Thongs and shorts to be folded inside their matching bra in the drawer.

Plain white / black / nude thongs & shorts to go in the other drawer.

All clothes hangers to be hooked on to the rail in the same direction and all clothes to be facing in the same direction (so all blouses / shirts / fronts of tee-shirts to be facing to the left)

I LOVE my anally tidy rules!

Ahh... but LeQueen, I notice you don't say "and I have got a life"

(Only kidding)

(Sort of)

And I work full time in a creative field.

(dunno where that big space came from BTW. Wasn't there in 'preview').

It wasn't just directed at you btw - more to the general level of concernedness on the whole thread.

I truly don't care. It's partly time, but even if I didn't have two jobs and two small children and there were 28 hours in the day, I just don't think I could ever care.

Ifancyashandy - I pair up socks when pegging them out too - but that is just jolly sensible as it means that we can roll them up as we are taking them off the line.

I have a particular way of stacking the supermarket trolley when doing the shopping, so that meat all stays together, as do items for the fridge and the store cupboards, and the fruit and veg go in the little section at the far end - then things go on the conveyor belt in their piles and get packed together, to make it easy to unpack them - I can just take a handful of bags to the fridge and put everything in them away, instead of having to sort each bag out before the stuff can go away.

It drives me utterly spare when dh and I go to the supermarket together, and he puts things in the wrong area of the trolley, flings everything willy nilly onto the conveyor belt, and packs each shopping bag with a mixture of veg, tins, toiletries and meat!!

I do most of the weekly shops online now - for the sake of our marriage!

I envy your airing cupboard, LeQueen. Sometimes I sort ours out, but it never stays looking nice, and it doesn't have enough shelves for true beauty.

I did try buying towels for each of us - so we each had our own towels in different colours, so we knew which belonged to which person - but no-one but me seemed to be able to grasp that ds1 got dark brown towels, ds2 got mid-brown towels, and ds3 got light brown towels, then dh got blue ones and I got pink ones. I've even found the dses bath sheets in the pile of dog towels (though I'm sure she wouldn't mind sharing).

To be fair, I think life is easier when things are ordered - I hate scrabbling round trying to find things so I like to know where stuff is. And I don't particularly like sitting still, so I tend to potter round tidying and picking stuff up even when I've got nothing specific to do.

Staying I do that with the trolley too, in fact the cashier a while ago was pretty rude about it and made some weird remark about having too much time on my hands! To me it's just common sense, why would I pack cold fresh milk next to warm fresh bread when it takes no longer than arranging it?

You could charge for entry, LeQueen. Or maybe the National Trust could run tours and set up a gift shop.

Or you could write a book on the correct care and feeding of towels and linens!

annabel - put the lint fluff in the compost!

I also don't like bags or the washing baskets (the ones which go outside to hang the washing out) on the tables. They get wiped down after every meal - I don't want random crap put on them so I've to wipe them down again. I also don't want the washing baskets put on the beds.

We're easy going on most things, but we do insist that the kitchen floor is swept after most meals because it stops the crumbs going round the house (you should see my DSis house!) and it saves me on vacuuming.

Actually there are probably loads more, but I can't think of them at the moment.