to think taking an hour to get ready (wash etc) every day isn't OTT?

[GourmetGold]

This is not really something that bothers ME at all, I've always taken about an hour to get ready every day. My hair is longish & fine and if I don't wash and dry it (+ small amount styling with curling tongs) at least every other day it looks greasy/messy.

I wear hard gas permeable contact lenses which need a good clean every morning and I like to wear a bit of make-up (not loads).
I'm unemployed at the moment and before that was doing years of shift work where I worked late and got up about 9/10 am, would do dishwasher, feed pets & any other household stuff, then get washed and ready a few hours after getting up..so maybe I'd be actually washed by midday..ish. So now I'm a bit stuck in that routine. I get things done, but just don't wash as soon as I'm out of bed.

I had an argument with my MIL the other day. I told her that SIL (her daughter) had been, in my opinion, rude to me over something. She became very defensive and angry (okay, guess everyone can do this, I'd be surprised if she didn't, wish hadn't bothered saying anything now).

But she then started to go on about how I was "hardly perfect" (I agreed!)...that I could be horrible...I asked her what she meant by that, on what occasions I'd been horrible.

The only thing she could come up with was that I made my DP's & everyone else's life very difficult by "not getting ready first thing & taking an hour to get ready every day..he always has to wait for you to get ready to go out & if we call to ask if you want to go out with us, we get fed up that you say you'll be ready in an hour".
She went on to say that DP had never complained to her about this...but she was very worried that I "might be making his life very difficult".
I knew that this did annoy her a bit, but didn't know quite HOW angry she was about it!

If MIL very occasionally invites us/me out, it is always a last minute thing...always in the morning, 10 minutes before she's going (we live close by).
I asked why she couldn't just give me more notice..like an hour or two, or day before? She was not impressed with this suggestion and seemed exasperated with me, that I couldn't just be up and ready to go, just in case she ever called.

I don't really understand the logic..what if I were 'up and ready' at 'crack of dawn'..but had made other plans...10 minutes notice is surely not reasonable EVERY time she wants to go out somewhere?

I'm really disappointed to find she seems to think so badly of me over something which seems, to me, really daft.

Their whole family seems a bit obsessed with punctuality and I/we have been made to feel terrible if we are ever 10 minutes late for a family function (once we were blanked & they had eaten all their main meal...we are only 10 minutes late!!), so guess this kind of fits in with that.
I'm really laid back about things like that as it seems so unimportant in the big scheme of things.

Has she got a point, do I sound a bit lazy and is it just me who doesn't get up and straight in the shower, ready really quick and 10 minutes notice to go out every time is completely reasonable.

Sorry really long post (I waffle badly!), don't know why I'm posting, feel bit embarrassed as it's so daft & unimportant

From your OP, I can see all this starting over the fact you were criticising / moaning about your SiL to your MiL....not a great way to behave. If you've a problem with your SiL, then talk to her about it, don't go telling tales to her mother.

The problem with this attitude to punctuality is that it doesn't come across as "laid back" to the people who are habitually kept waiting for you. It comes across as bloody rude and very self-centred because clearly, you are more important than the event you couldn't be bothered to turn up on time for

My DM was routinely late and she'd also assure you it was "only 10 minutes". But it never is. If your family had managed to eat an entire main course while waiting for you to roll up then you must have been a deal later than 10 minutes

These points

To answer your Question directly, then yes, I think taking an hour to get up/washed/dressed everyday is OTT, but, it's none of anyone else's business as long as you get up early enough to not make people late.

I can see that, if I wanted to do something on the spur of the moment, and thought it would be nice to invite you, it would then be frustrating to be told you needed an hour to get ready to go. I can't understand why (if it's somewhere you wanted to go) you couldn't just tie your hair back, throw some clothes on, and go, presuming it's not for an interview or wedding or something.

I think your MIL is being unreasonable to expect to only ever give you 10 mins notice.

However, if you're late for things or making your DP wait then you are being very unreasonable in that regard. I also take an hour to get ready - more if I need to load dishwasher/put washer on/ do other jobs as well. It takes my DH a lot less time. So I generally get up earlier and start getting dressed earlier, so he doesn't have to wait for me.

If doing other things before getting ready means you'll be late or your DP will have to wait for you, then you need to re-asses your priorities so you get ready first and then do the other things.

well, there's a few things here, i don't think spending an hour getting ready for the day is excessive, when I didn't have DCs i would spend nearly that in the mornings before work. However, that you don't do it until the afternoon, so at the earliest you are available to do anything is 1pm is pretty shit. You are making yourself unavaiable for half the day every day, and while 10 minutes notice isn't great, if you have no other plans and were actually dressed already, then you could be out in that time and not have to decline things.

I am a reformed 'late' person and your faffing to get ready (a shower, including hair wash, hair dried and straightened, clothes and full make up on shouldn't take more than 40 minutes unless it's a special occasion, I can normally do all that in under 30) suggests you are rubbish at managing time, I can tell you you are unbelievably irritating to everyone else, it's just only people like your MIL are rude enough to tell you.

If they'd eaten the main meal, that suggests you weren't told to arrive at 12, but by 12 as that's when the food would be served. Most people would take that as 11:50am is the latest you could arrive without being rude. By arriving after the food served time, you were insulting everyone by effectively suggesting they should wait for you before they eat, even though everyone else managed to be there to eat at 12noon.

You need to stop thinking that an arranged time is the earliest you should arrive somewhere and accept to the bulk of the population, it's the latest you can arrive without being rude. If you'd arranged to meet your MIL at 12:30, then that was the latest time you could arrive and be on time, 12:31 was late. 12:29 was cutting it fine. 12:20 should have been your aim time.

Repeat to yourself until you get it, 1 minute late is late, 5 minutes early is acceptable. Being late is rude and makes you look like you think you are the most important person. Being early makes you look like you think the other person's time is important and the other person matters.

TBH, before you even got to the bit about taking a long time to get ready and being late I was wonder what on earth possessed you to tell your MIL that you thought your SIL had been rude to you? Unless you were explaining why you are never going to see her again or some other imperative reason, then I can't think of any reason that I would do that.

In terms of the lateness thing, I don't think she's saying that you should get ready quicker, more than if you got ready as soon as you got up, you would be able to attend spontaneous get togethers, and that by needing an hour's notice, you are missing out. I understand her point - I am a slob about until I need to go somewhere kind of person, but when I can muster up the enthusiasm, I much prefer it when I am ready sooner as it means I can just grab my bag and leave the house.

If she really thinks that your failure to get ready when you get up is preventing your husband from being able to go out with his family with short notice, then she may have a point. And, if you're late when you see them, it probably makes her think that you don't care whether you hold her up or not which adds to her frustrations about your unwillingness to get ready just on the off-chance that you will be invited out to do something.

It doesn't sound like you are going to be best friends, no matter what you do, but you could probably improve her opinion of you if you want to - do you actually want to though? Do you care?

I also think you're focussing on the wrong thing - it's not really about the time you take to get ready, more about the fact that you don't do it early enough in the day to be able to join in with stuff happening at short notice.

YABU.

While your MIL could do with winding her neck in you sound incredibly inflexible. Can you never just rush out of the house with all that faff? It would drive me crazy if someone was incapable of rushing occasionally.

I also think habitual lateness if rude and selfish. Ultimately it means you consider your time more important than others.

It's none of your MIL's business.

It would utterly piss me off though. You're never ready to leave the house before midday? Everything having to be put on hold for an hour until you're ready? I could understand it if you were working late but you're not. Not getting out of bed until gone 9 and not dressing until midday sounds like you're hibernating!

One trick I have which I've developed due to the school run and a DH who is his own boss so not operating to a fixed start time is to work backwards with the timings. The fixed point is often when you need to arrive somewhere so you adjust everything else to fit in with that. e.g.

-DC need to be at school at 8.20am (Fixed Point)
-Allow 20 mins for journey so must leave house by 8am
-DC need 30 mins to get up, breakfast and dress etc. + 15mins to wake up and allow for general faffing so allow 45 mins total.
-DC need to get up at 7.15am
-I need 30 mins to shower, dress, pack lunches etc. so I get up by 6.45am at the latest.

Usually we take a bit less time and so the DC are at school a few minutes earlier but this schedule has enough slack built in that we are rarely late.

Thing is, lots of people take an hour to get ready, it's just they do it at the start of the day, so it doesn't dictate when everything else happens in the day. If you always got ready first thing, then your DH/ILs/Friends wouldn't have to factor in "Gourmet's hour to get ready" time. If you were washed, dressed,hair done and make up done by 9am every day, then if you got a call at 11am to meet for lunch at 12, you could say "yes, sounds great, let's just throw on shoes and coats and go" but it's like you use your 'getting ready time' to force your DH to only do things with a day or so's notice.

It seems controlling of everyone around you, you don't like spontaneous plans, so you force them to not happen. It might not be deliberate, but that might be how it looks from the outside.

(Being late can be a form of trying to control the situation as well, you arrange for everyone else to be at a place at X time, you arrive at X + 10minutes so you know everyone will be there and you can start straight away with whatever you planned to do)

Actually OP, although I am an up and ready kind of person, my DP isn't and he will do everything he needs to do before he then showers and gets dressed to go out somewhere, which I do find a bit odd.

The fact that you aren't ready at 10 minutes notice isn't the issue at all - it's that your MIL thinks you are slovenly and a poor time keeper. If you did things in a different order, so got up, showered, got dressed and did hair and make-up you would still have the other jobs you normally factor in to do and couldn't be ready in 10 mins because all you have changed is the order you've done them in.

Frankly, what business is it of hers?

As for making arrangements and being late, I can understand someone being annoyed. If you are going out around lunchtime, it makes sense to actually plan when you are going to get something to eat. The soup eating when you were ten minutes late picking her up was very pointed though.

6 of one and half a dozen of the other really - she doesn't like that you aren't ready at the drop of a hat and has her own idea why that is, you would appreciate notice as you want to plan to ensure you are ready for her.

Wowfudge - no, because if the other jobs are things like 'load/unload the dishwasher' 'sort the washing out' etc and not a full day of stuff, then if something came up with a 10 minute notice and the OP was dressed already, then she could go and do those jobs later in the day, whereas if she does the jobs first, then spends an hour getting ready, even if she leaves the 'non-time critical' household jobs until later in the day, she still needs to at that point start her 1 hour get ready.

It's that the OP doesn't like doing things that aren't planned in advance, so forces them not to happen ever.

And then when she is provided with adequate notice, she still can't be ready to arrive on time, to the extend that family are so sick of it they just go ahead and eat without her and her DH, meanng he misses out on stuff with his family because of his wife's routines.

If you had a job, would you turn up 10 minutes late? Or would you be on time because that's important? What you're saying to them everytime you turn up late is 'You are not important to me'. If you really cared and understood like you say you do, you'd stop being late.

Mary how in the name of buggering Christ have you read this thread and deduced that the OP is the controlling one because she won't get dressed first thing and sit by the phone just in case her MIL rings her up and wants to go somewhere without having given her any notice? Srsly?!

I easily take that long but I get up early. So on school days, I'm generally up before 6am and we leave the house at 7.40am. That does include several cups of coffee though.

I personally wouldn't like to be in dressing gown or whatever until lunchtime as would feel a little slovenly

But your mil is odd to mention it - I bet there's a whole load of other stuff going on.

I can understand the taking a long time to get ready as OP says she is quite concerned about appearance (possibly because her mother was one to pick holes in clothes/hair etc). I have quite a bit of that anxiety as well.

Just keep an eye on it so that it doesn't restrict you, OP. It's harmless enough provided you aren't missing out on things you'd quite like to do because you can't just shower quickly, chuck an outfit on and go.

SaucyJack - because she has a routine she will not alter to get, it effects other people, and in the words of her MIL "makes life difficult" for others, the OP likes having a few hours or days notice of things, and so has a routine by which if she's not given the required notice, stuff won't happen.

It seems in a pattern with being late a lot, in my experience, 'late' people either think they are slightly more important to others, are ludicriously disorganised (but funnily enough can be for things they think 'matter'), or are trying to control others via their lateness and having others fit round them, even if they aren't concious of that.

The regular lateness, with a desire for notice for stuff (even if she would do it and has no other plans to be rearranged), and having a routine that enforces others around her have to give her desired amount of notice all seems rather controlling when put together. It has the effect of making others fit round what she wants, never being able to fit round any one else.

I can see the point about OP being controlling for sure.

Who cares?

I do exactly what I want and if she were my MIL I wouldn't be ready either. I do not like spur of the moment arrangements.

She sounds very disorganised and a bit selfish herself for expecting you to be ready at her beck and call. Maybe you could chuck that into the conversation and see how she likes that?

Seriously though, I would be distancing myself from her. Stupid old bat.

I think not being up and ready before midday every day is pretty poor really. It just screams lazy slob to do that everyday. I know you're not that because like you've said, you're doing things like washing or whatever but if I wasn't ready until midday every day of the week I would feel lazy and like a slob.

I'm also surprised you effectively slagged off your sil to her mum?! What did you think she was going to do!? Not defend her own daughter?

However, you are not being unreasonable to want more notice for social engagements. Hate last minute things myself.

I had a friend once who was always, always at least 20 minutes late, sometimes more like 30 and even longer. She never really seemed to realise that I had stopped whatever I was doing, left enough time to get to the cafe/cinema etc and managed to get there on time. There was always some vague excuse about finishing a book/sending an important email. It drove me crazy.

if you're always late it's rude and annoying,, even if it's just 10 minutes.

it's ok to take an hour to get ready, but I would think you're pretty lazy if you can't be ready by 9 or 10 am every day. I take 45 minutes to get ready, but on weekdays I'm in the shower at 7 am (I do work though). on weekends I'm ready by 9 i would say.

Faffing drives me nuts as do people who are habitually late. It's rude.

I would suggest that if you need someone to rant to about your SIL then your MIL is not a good choice.

Well, it's not really any of her business, so on that note YANBU.

But since you've asked, and said you may feel better if you got ready earlier I can't think of anything more likely to make me feel depressed and miserable than slobbing around in my own filth til gone midday.

I would worry that the absence of work plus the routine of not being ready to face the world til the afternoon every day would lead me into a bit of a depressive rut.

And to the original question - an hour to get ready sounds about right to me. I shower, wash, dry and straighten my hair everyday and it takes me about that long, though in between that I am also chivying DC to get themselves washed and dressed..

No Mary- she isn't making life difficult for her MIL by not being at her beck-and-call. The MIL is choosing to make life difficult for herself by refusing to give the OP what any sane person would consider a reasonable amount of notice. The MIL is free to do what she wants, when she wants.

If you're going to make plans for the day for anyone other than your own small child, then it's just common sense and common bloody courtesy to let the other person know as soon as you can. I don't ring people up (and I doubt you do either) and tell them I've planned for them to go out for lunch in ten minutes. And I certainly wouldn't get the hump if they dared to have their own opinion on how they'd planned to spend their morning.

All that is academic anyway. I don't doubt the MIL is doing it deliberately just to give herself a reason to have a pop at the OP for not being up and dressed first thing.

I dont tihnk its UR to take an hour to get ready. I wake up at 7am and go to bed at 1am every day inc weekends. That gives me 18 hours every day so for me I don't see how taking an hour to get ready is an issue really, I choose to want to make sure I look nice so make sure I make the time to do so. I also have a quick shower at night as well usually takes 30 minutes from night shower to getting into bed.

Like you said, your husband works various hours and is often himself not up and ready before midday either so as long as you and him don't have an issue about you not being ready at a certain time I don't see the problem.

I would however suggest that if you know you have to be somewhere (esp MIL related things) that you have been given sufficient notice about you should not be late.

Anything else if by the by, if she rings you up spontaneously its really up to you if you want to go, to be honest anyone who rings me up last minute is 90% guaranteed to get a no answer because I will have already decided what I need do/ or made other plans myself.