to hate it when other people stay in my house.

[BauerTime]

Me and DH have been away for a couple of nights and a relative has been staying in our house babysitting for us. I know this makes me sound mightily ungrateful but babysitting or not, whenever we have/let people stay at our house, it seems to take several hours on return to make the place look and feel like our home again and it drives me mad!

Why are ALL of the tea towels now dirty but there a big pile of washing up? Why are all of the toys piled neatly at the wall on the opposite side of the room to the toy box where they all fit if just thrown in? Why are there random items left everywhere? Why not just put them back?

Ahhhhhh!

I agree with Lancashire.

OP is grateful for the favour but is slightly annoyed about how her house has been left. It's not about it being a small price to pay- it's annoying. It's ok to be annoyed.

She hasn't said anything to the house sitter, that would be rude, cheeky AND unreasonable.

Give her a break- jeez.

Dirty tea towels, toys neatly stacked but in the wrong place, and bed linen washed; not a huge problem; you are being unreasonable, you know. You don't mention any problems with your children so presumably they were cared for properly; perhaps your mother in law focused all her attention on them, at the expense of the washing-up.

Bauer , if you have a long term condition that makes it hard to do housework AND you are on your own with a baby for now then please have some and say what you like about it being annoying. It is just one of the difficulties of parenthood, I think, that it feels like everything has a 'price' and nothing is straightforward.

And it doesn't really matter if YABU in your own private brain as long as you are polite to your MiL for the favour. Hope you can manage.

I think you are being utterly unreasonable, sorry but I do! And you are drip feeding re. your identifiable condition.

YABU

Hope you feel better today Bauer. I have stayed to baby and house sit and have to say my main concern was that the children were fine. Lots of playing and reading so i knew they were happy and not missing mum and dad too much. Before its time to go all dishes are done, toys away etc, but it never looks quite the same. Hope you have a nice day with your lo.

Toys & washing up annoying.

Bed stripped & not made-horrible!

Sometimes I strip the bed & forget

And that sinking feeling when you realise that you have to make the bed...

How old are your children?

I've just re-read the thread to see you have a clingy baby that your MIL looked after for two days (and possibly other children?). I would be so happy to have 2 days away I wouldn't really care about the state of my house upon my return.

I get you, OP. It doesn't make anything easier to realise you are being unreasonable and ungrateful, you just find yourself wishing that whoever did you the favour hadn't also made extra work, especially when there were identifiable, easier ways to do things.

I get this when my parents come to stay. They pile dirty dishes carefully in intricate, tottering piles immediately above the dishwasher, but don't put them in, they use what are obviously cloths/sponges for wiping work surfaces to wash glasses and cups (ugh!), and despite the fact that there is a downstairs loo five steps away, with liquid soap, hand towels etc, my father cannot be prevented from washing his dirty hands with washing up liquid in the kitchen sink, often over newly rinsed salad sitting there in a colander. and drying them on the linen towel meant for drying glasses. And don't get me started on his habit of eating leftovers out of his hand standing over the kitchen sink, and leaving crumbs everywhere.

And yes. I've asked them not to dozens of times. And yes, I love them.

(Sorry, rant over. That felt good.)

I'm over it today thanks all! Still finding random things round the house that dont make sense to me (i.e. Dirty oven trays just bunged back in the oven rather than left out so i know they need to be washed up) but its just a 'that pesky MIL' today rather than rage about it.

Re drip feeding - i wasn't actually intending to mention it was MIL or the reason why i wasn't feeling my best but someone asked who it was and another assumed i was hungover so i was just responding. The fact that i struggled yesterday due to health is neither here nor there.

I think now that my problem actually is that there seems to be an effort to purposely do things differently or silently comment on things through actions. Why would you change someone elses bed???

Sorry no, no other children.

YANBU. Obviously YWBU to tell her you were annoyed, but you know that.

Absolutely nothing wrong with having a rant on here. It's like letting off steam down the pub with your mates, only without having to leave the house.

(whispers) come to chat, much easier to vent.

Yanbu, my mum is just like this, thinks she is doing me a favour by hoovering (and then breaks the Hoover) or a load of washing (and then breaks the washing machine), gets all martyred because I never wanted her to bloody do it to begin with and now I have to pay for repair/replacements.

Only difference is I can tell my mum!

The bed thing especially would have annoyed me as it's nosey and intrusive and there is no reason for it whatsoever.

You've got to mention it though. It brings it out into the open and you get to say what you do and don't want to happen. Not in a confrontational way, just mentioning you don't want beds stripped or furniture moved thank you.

Apparently it's a very well recognised effect of stress that (to paraphrase) you think everyone else is doing everything wrong, and that only you can do it right. The more stressed you get, the more you think they're screwing up, and the more you think that you have to do everything yourself.

I wonder whether that's the situation you're in at the moment, OP, with your health issues?

OTOH, you're not as bad as my DH who refused to use a room until the scent of the visitors had disappeared (very strong perfume!)

Ah yes, the P-A ML stuff! My MIL begged to babysit when I was pg, so I gratefully used her one morning a week when I went back to work pt when dd was 6 wks old. She brought my washing in. Every time. When it was still soaking wet.

She would arrive, see that loads of washing was hung everywhere inside the flat, so nowhere to put more washing. Sheets etc would be hung outside on line - massive effort for me to get wet heavy washing down there (I was really ill, but this had not been realised, or dx at the time). I would get home at lunchtime to be greeted by "I thought it was going to rain so I brought your washing in." Nowhere for it to go; it did not rain. Not fucking helpful.

Was I polite? Of course. Was I grateful? Hell no.

I think it is rude to leave washing up and dirty oven trays. Ok they they were doing the OP a favour but leaving a mess behind isn't on.

Tricky one, but no, YANBU. It's your home and you'll have to clean up the mess when they've gone.

If they are babysitting for free then you have to give a bit of leeway but if it looks like world war 3 has happened then a polite word is okay.
However, you then have to weigh up the consequences - what if they just don't want to babysit again? Is the mess worth putting up with in order to have them babysit?

If they were paid to babysit them I'd hit the roof, bang out of order!

I understand OP. Even when doing house-sitting for free I don't understand treating someone's house as your own. Seems obvious to leave it the way you found it IMO.

When in Uni my friend housesat for me. I scrubbed the place spotless for her prior to leaving and came home to the following:

-my furniture rearranged
-all my drawers and kitchen cupboards rearranged
-a plunger covered in wet toilet paper shoved in the hall closet
-my answering machine message changed
-no food or water out for my cat
-my personal laptop open and on.
-piles of my books and belongings stacked on my kitchen table.
-my friends thesis, which I was to review, in the garbage

Neither of us has ever discussed it. She didn't understand why I distanced myself from her for a time.

You are not being unreasonable. It must be frustrating though as your mil was doing you a favour and you can't complain. I'd be very annoyed if someone stripped my bead without asking-its like saying 'I think your sheets are smelly'. My mum came to help when ds was born, and she was really great, but she used to leave dirty cups and apple cores in random places, andthrow plastic wrappers In the stove....all these little things really bugged me and it was almost a relief whenshe went home.