to baulk at MIL's shopping habits for my children?

[parakeet]

Yes, it's another MIL one, sorry.

We have two young children, MIL's only grandchildren, and she sees them every couple of months. She has always gone mad at Christmas but this year was crazy - she probably bought about 30-40 presents between them, including eight separate multi-packs of bobbles and hair-clips, each with about 20-50 items in. The rest was a mixture of bits and bobs, nothing too expensive, it's just the sheer quantity.

We were loading it into plastic bags and we could barely fit it all in the car. As well as all the stuff that was given to them at the time, there was another massive bin-bag of unwrapped presents we were supposed to give to them "later on in the year" because "she just couldn't help herself"

My husband and I have never really believed in going mad on the presents front at Christmas so the children don't come to think it's all about how much stuff you get. We also don't have a massive house - the two children share a bedroom - and we literally have no room for it. I know there are worse problems in life to have but I'm starting to wonder if there is an obsessive-compulsive element to her shopping?

Thanks for all the replies.

I don't like to ask for contributions to a bank account because for me, personally, that feels like it could look a little bit grasping. However there have been some other good suggestions, like trying to steer her towards books and clothes. She's like a force of nature...cannot be stopped, but hopefully harnessed in some useful way...

Pmsl .... All over the chair.
Bloody hell, have never heard of the "bag for during the year" thing.
My mil also gives odd presents ... 9yo dd got shower gel set, only £4.99 from mil local chemist. She had left price tag on.
And a dropped notepad and pen set. And an adult watch with links in it.
I wouldn't dare say anything to mil. Dh would go mental and mil would threaten to jump under a train, as she has done before.

BM. As in Bloody Mil, not BridesMaid, or whatever it was.

I would just say it's very generous of her to buy lots of gifts but due to space a lot of it will have to stay at her house for the kids to play with when you visit.

It does sound a bit over the top but she is thinking of them lots and loves them very much.It could be worse. I understand that space is an issue though.
May be she did not have much when she was young. I know my own parents are very guilty of this. Drop subtle hints in the summer monthes of book titles puzzles small items /clothing that they will use and hopefully some of it may sink in (or may be worse you get even more)!!
I always take the view that sadly they will not be able to do this for ever (my parents are elderly) and they get enormous pleasure from it.(Currently looking at a huge police motorbike in my hallway!)
Good luck

Can you perhaps suggest that rather than a large number of cheap gifts, would she prefer to buy one or two 'big' gifts? Tell her you can't store that many gifts so many will not be used and she has wasted her money.

YY Books, clothes, how about craft things? They are therefore not long term 'stored' and you can post her a pile of carefully created gifts from her DGC that she then has to display... maybe smellies too.

YANBU. My MIL is the same, but over the years she has gradually improved the quality and decreased the quantity of her presents.

This is due to DH talking to her before every Christmas / birthday and kindly reminding her not to go overboard.

She has probably also noticed half the stuff she gave us in the charity shop window.

I had this problem endless tat, but if I'd have said anything would have come across as ungrateful.
So I decided enough was enough "oo look at all these lovely things but we have no room at home so let's leave them at DGs as they have so much more space"
Funnily enough my DC get far less stuff now

YANBU. A good friend of mine has this problem too. It isn't just Christmas and birthdays, it's every time she visits her MIL her ds (only grandchild) is showered with large volumes of large plastic noisy toys. She asked for books instead but was told books weren't as much fun to buy . So she ended up refusing to take it all home, insisting most of it stayed at MIL's for him to play with when visiting. It's helped a bit.

My dd loves going to visit her ds - it's like Santa's grotto in their house! My dd has the opposite problem. A combination of disinterested and very conservative (small c) family here means that out of three grandparents and three sets of aunts and uncles, she only got ONE toy for Christmas!

SNAP! My mil is exactly the same. I even joked about her pulling up in an artic-truck at xmas. She assures us she won't go mad but she can't help herself, she's a shopaholic and the glut of cheapo shops that are opening everywhere doesn't help. I thinkit's making up for the fact she had feck all growing up. If she does go easy on quantity she makes up for it with the size of toy. The bigger the better. We are very lucky and grateful but it does get ott.

my mil is the same and actually i find it a bit upsetting, i hate that the children have loads and loads of tat, it seem v. greedy also she bought them more than we did for xmas this year which i know i felt hormonally upset about and i had a massive rant at dh about as i felt he should have said something,,,
sigh dont know how to change it as i also know she means well but it is a waste of money , am too polite to tell her myself

My mum is like this - I just tell her there is no room in the car/house and suggest she keeps it at her house. That has stopped her to some degree....

It seems this is very common. Interestingly though, no-one has commented on the question in my original post. I suspect there is an OCD aspect. I mean EIGHT multi-packs of bobbles/clips? How can anyone think this would be seriously needed? To me, that's stockpiling bordering on hoarding.

Well it's a possibility. Either that or she has been buying stuff throughout the year and forgot what she has got/has been taking advantage of multibuy offers.
Bobbles and clips wouldn't bother me tbh. They're pretty small and 8 packs would probably just about be a years supply in this house as nursery seems to eat them. Quite easy to 'lose' some as well if necessary (charity shop, friends kids etc) without it being noticed.

If she's said 'You can't stop me' after it has been gently suggested that she tone it down, I would tell her honestly what you do with the excess. I'd tell her that you simply don't have any room for all this stuff, and so it isn't kept.

We watched ink horror over the last x years as our nephews were showered with bags and bag of toys, when asked discretely my BIL said they put some of it away for bringing out during the year because there was just SO much stuff, all nice, but hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

We headed it off at the start, the first birthday/Christmas we said that we would appreciate one gift but that if they wanted to spend more than that it would be best to go into DDs back account. My family refuse to do that end of, but it has worked quite well overall for my MIL as she freely admits that she took more time to think about the gift she would like to give DD.

8 packs of hair bobbled. That's excessive even if I do have to repeatedly buy them for myself as I seem to lose one a day.

Or. Say that you are thinking of the worlds resources and you'd like gifts which last for longer so no more plastic.

My theory, OP, is that anyone who hasn't been in a toyshop since the 70s or 80s is just staggered by how cheap everything is.

My parents put as much thought and research into buying my bike in the 80s as I did into buying our car last year. We were by no means poor, but getting a bike was a BIG deal. Now a bike is something you can throw into your trolley on a dash round the supermarket.

Same with clothes - if you grew up in the 70s or 80s I bet all your photos show you wearing orange, red and green unisex clothes, that were carefully passed down among several siblings and then onto friends. Now you can't give secondhand children's clothes away. When was the last time you saw a kid wearing clothing that had been patched? Remember those iron-on patches that used to be ubiquitous? These days, why would you bother patching jeans when you can buy a new pair for 3.99?

I do understand the impulse to spoil children when it's so cheap and there's such a vast array of stuff available, but given that housing prices seem to have increased in inverse proportion to toy prices, it's just not feasible.

And I agree with Fissplaps, "you can't stop me" is quite passive-aggressive, so I would simply tell her that true, you can't stop her wasting her money, but that she has no right to fill your house with crap so it goes to the charity shop.

Parakeet, my DDs would easily go through eight packets of bobbles or elastics or clips in a month if I didn't hunt them down daily and return them to the bathroom. They redo their hair a lot and just leave them lying around.

I agree with Ninedragons on the subject of cheapness -- maybe the MIL is making up for a sense of deprivation she may have felt in earlier days, whether she felt she had to deprive her own children or be too careful about where every penny went and she is now going a bit overboard?

(Though my own DCs and the DCs of all the women I know wear handmedowns and always have. We pack clothes in bags and hand them on regularly -- the teens prefer new or to buy their own second hand but the under 12 set are not fussy.)

at least it's new stuff. My mum always comes with stuff from charity shops. Don't get me wrong, I like buying stuff from charity shops, but it's depressing when she always turns up with armfuls of (horrible) clothes that we're supposed to feel grateful for. What amazes me is how lovely my children (in their 20s) are about it. They'll say 'lovely, thank-you' then get rid of them when they get home. I'm not so grateful.

Just accept with good grace and then after the event you can lose some stuff or whatever. Dont forget, when kids are tiny it is easy to buy them loads of crap they will love...as they get older they will want more expensive stuff so obv she wont be getting them as much!

Indulge her for now - like someone else said, she doesnt have to know.

The best grandparent is a present one, not a present-wielding one.

YANBU but it does seem to be very common! We have this too. It's improving as she is round often enough to notice when things have magically disappeared. To be fair, in most cases they were broken within minutes anyway rather than discarded. We explained that we & dd would rather one food gift, costing less than a multitude of shite bits. She seemed to get it, but the. The bag of shite was produced as well!

In our case her efforts are redoubled by doddery great aunt & not so doddery other rellies as well. She does it to the adults to. Sadly it IS a shopping addiction rather than a caring nature (v long back story) & as she won't deal with it, really can't be stopped. :0(

My MIL used to give DS loads of stuff at xmas and birthdays. Once when I said she didn't need to get quite so much, she said "well I can't just get him one thing, can I?" to which my reply was yes!

I sell / give unwanted presents away and give the money back to the children's piggy banks or buy them something they really want. Nobody needs to know.