to wish MIL would leave my fucking laundry alone!

[bumpertobumper]

She was only trying to be helpful,but is it too much to hope that by almost 70 she should know the basics by now!
Today she was looking after DD while I went to a work meeting, dd had a good long nap so mil decided to 'help' with the laundry. She hung up the load I had put on this morning nicely folded on the airer! Who thinks folded clothes dry? She then put on a load - a mixture of a sheet and some pillow cases, DPs grubby gardening jeans, some baby clothes, tea towels AND DSs shitty pants he'd had an accident in! (They were beside the utility sink, I hadn't had a chance to tackle them). I have just been hanging this load of washing feeling a bit , but now have the rage when I got to the pants in the bottom of the basket, still with traces...
Ffs, if you aren't going to do it properly just leave it.
She also decided that the bath mats beside the washing machine were fine, trying to save me from having to do too much washing, and put them back on the bathroom floor. DD had pissed on them!
She has form for carefully folding dirty clothes and putting them in the kids drawers. And washing up so badly, with the surfaces cloth, that I have to redo it.

She is a great help really, I am very lucky, and we get on well.
But I just need to rant about the unhelpful help which has made more work for me not less... Finding the little things annoying at the moment as the add up. Usually can let it go.

Oh and the aunt who unpacked a bag I'd packed to go away...

It's also offensive for these women to assume they are doing the wife's jobs for her in cleaning the house and laundering their son's clothes.

Help that creates more work for you or creates stress by invading your privacy is not help and you don't need to be grateful for it. However it's not easy to deal with politely.*

Exactly! In both cases RubbishRobot

Perhaps the fact you leave your children's shitty pants and pissed on stuff lying around makes her think you're a bit slovenly in the housekeeping department?
Putting dirty things next to the washing machine for when you are next able to wash them isn't slovenly. Also, it's equally DH's responsibility. And none of her MIL's business.

It's an easy problem to solve though. Pay a childminder to look after the kids while you work.

You know what they say, pay peanuts, get monkeys. Pay nothing, get your washing and babysitting done for free. Take your pick.

OP isn't complaining that her MIL didn't do her (their!) laundry exactly as requested. She didn't ask/doesn't want her to do the laundry, just babysit her grandchild. Which is usually something that benefits child, grandparent, mother and father.

So, she's almost 70, and you have her babysit your child, and then moan when she tries to help with chores?

Blimey. How ungrateful.

So OP has to be grateful for things which she hasn't asked to be done and which aren't done properly? And she isn't allowed to gracefully thank her MIL in person and then express how she actually feels anonymously on an internet forum to complete strangers, thereby enabling her to be gracious and thank her MIL?

Can't have it both ways. Overlook this and be grateful you've got childcare. Throw the shitty pants away!

My MIL rearranged my entire flat when I went away. Who the fuck moves double beds and sofas around in someone elses home?
I had left silk jumpers lying flat over the bath to dry. Obviously she saw this as an invitation to rewash them and shrunk them all. Then hid them so I wouldn't find out.

This is also very, very true with bells on Satsuki

"And on the other side, let's not pretend that these mums and Mil's do not have the odd moan, tut and raised eyebrow about us!

I'm sure I've given them good moan fodder in their time, the difference is, they often don't mind telling me grin"

I know my MIL must moan about me because

1. she told DH English women (me) must be used to having household servants because I hadn't cleaned the house we moved into and unpacked all the boxes while he was at work before her first visit to the house (I was 8 months pregnant and had a toddler and had been in the house 24 hours)

2. She moaned and gossiped at length about SIL (BIL's wife - now ex-wife...) every time I saw her for the entire time she and BIL were together, yet she loved SIL and spent loads of time smoking and gossiping with her on the terrace (probably moaning and gossiping about me :o )

The sanctimonious people screeching "ungrateful" on every single thread where people have a bit of a moan are so utterly missing the point that this is just a bit of a moan and the adult daughters/ DILS are being grateful and nice and polite to their MILs - if they weren't they wouldn't need to vent on MN and would just solve the problem by being direct/ rude about it to their mothers/ MILs!

My own mother doesn't lift a finger and expects to be waited on when she visits, so I totally see both sides - its cathartic to vent about both in order to smile in "real life!"

Sorry but I agree. YABU and very ungrateful.
She's 70 FFS. She gives up her time to look after her grandchild and is trying to help you by doing a bit of laundry and you slate her for it?

Maybe if you didn't leave shitty pants and piss soaked bathmats lying around she wouldn't feel the need to 'help'

People need to lighten up! The OP didn't scream or shout or scold her MIL. She was nice and polite and then came on here to rant, which is allowed!
Doing laundry is only helpful if it's done properly. My Mum shoves whites and darks in together, throws clothes on top of one another on the airer so the stuff underneath can't dry and then stuck ugly address labels on the outside of my sons' chest of drawers saying "vests" or "socks" in the wrong order. They won't come off because the address labels are really adhesive so will have to be scrubbed off.

I don't argue with her about it because she is trying to help but it is aggravating when people ruin your furniture!

I'm amazed that anyone thinks it's ok to go rummaging through anyone else's laundry, it's interfering and intrusive.
DH isn't even allowed to do it as he hangs up the clothes up wrong and messes with my system. He irons so slowly that I find it painful to watch so I'd rather just do it myself. His job is to sort socks. He went to boarding school so has never done his own laundry, in the 20 years we've lived together, he has only ever used the washer once when I was in hospital having DS. He does most of the general cleaning instead.

My mother is completely unhousetrained and I wouldn't trust her to do it, not that she would ever try.

My MIL is the opposite and would LOVE to get stuck into the housework except she's too polite to interfere directly. I can see her twitching though as our standards aren't as high as hers but she lives on her own and has a cleaner. She also didn't work when DH was little so don't think she quite gets what it's like when you've both got demanding jobs.
We've just moved into our first owned house and we're doing it one room at a time. She keeping mithering DH to just hire a decorator and get a cleaner.

Unlike everyone else's MILs, she directs it at DH rather than me, agree with the inherent sexism involved in a lot of the MIL laundry interference here. After she left last time, we found some notes she'd written for him on how to clean suede shoes.

This is Am I Being Unreasonable?

OP asked if she was Being Unreasonable.
Some posters said yes she is.
Don't post in AIBU unless you are prepared to hear that actually, some people do think that you are BU!!!

How many of you go into your MILs and start cleaning or doing laundry?
I would never dream of doing anything of the sort. You know boundaries and all that.

My very lovely dear departed gran used to do all the laundry & ironing at my DPs house. She loved it, but she was of the chuck-it-in-on-the-same-programme for everything school, and couldn't go a day without washing, so it was always all sorts of colours & clothes in together.

My mum used to hide things from her. For good reason - quite a lot of things got shrunk or ruined! Once, when I was at uni she sent me a letter with a package inside & asked if I'd mind seeing if I could get a replacement. Turned out to be a pair of my mum's posh knickers - silk or whatever - that my dad had obviously bought as a gift. They were now absolutely teeny-tiny, doll-size! She didn't want to confess so thought 18-year-old me was a good bet for going lingerie shopping on her behalf to cover up the crime.

I so miss her, we all do.

previous poster: Recently she cleaned the kitchen sink & plastic basin with bleach I keep beside the loo to clean the toilet with which I thought was incredibly unhygienic.

Eh? What?
Does bleach kept beside the toilet somehow ingest poo germs?
At a loss...

such a refreshing first post. Being the lazy arse I am, I am relieved to think that when I get to the point of having a DIL, I can spend the time playing with the grandchildren and not doing absolutely anything useful for her, out of an absolute sense of respect.

If your MIL is so useless and annoying Op why don't you just get paid help instead?

Ye gods pepperpot have you not actually read the opening post?

OP said

"She is a great help really, I am very lucky, and we get on well.
But I just need to rant about the unhelpful help which has made more work for me not less..."

What is it with people being so determined to take offence on behalf of people not on the thread and to tell everyone else off?

So much sanctimonious twattery on MN at the moment - its not the people having an anonymous online vent so that they can continue to smile and be lovely in RL who are spoiling MN but the ones determined not to understand that well intentioned meddling which creates more work can be irritating and to chastise anyone who admits to privately feeling a bit irritated.

MIL looked after our DD whilst I worked (very part-time max 3 hrs at a time) when she was very little. She said she really wanted to do it and we did pay her (more than a childminder or nursery would've cost for the actual hours) but it only lasted about 9 months before we had to swap to nursery for similar reasons.

It was made very clear that we did not expect or want her to do housework and if the baby was napping then to go ahead and read a book/watch TV etc. guilt-free. She did however decide 'help' now and again. It is very difficult to be grateful when someone's help actually causes you more work or damages things that then need to be replaced.

I was stunned by some of the things she did considering she hasn't been in paid employment since she had her first child 40 odd years ago and had plenty of time to perfect her housekeeping skills...she is definitely a 'bung all the washing in together on the same cycle every time' kind.

Anyway, my only suggestion is that if you want her to look after your child then you take the child to her or don't have anything around she could help with.

My mil once cost us a few hundred quid in one 3 hour babysitting session. This was in an urgent situation, not a cinema trip type thing.

Did we thank her for helping us out when we needed it? of course She's lovely and we couldn't have managed without her.

Did we privately say why on earth..? What was she thinking...? Why did she even..? You betcha we did. We're nice people, but we're not perfect.

My mother stayed many years ago, and "helped" by washing everything all in together, including a woollen jumper in the washing machine(before the days of hand wash cycles). She taught me how to sort washing - how could she have thought that was okay?

My MIL sometimes removes the washing I have hung on the line, and rehangs it according to her preference. She only does it to be annoying, though, so I don't rise to it. I just don't mention it, at all. (I know she is doing it to be annoying, BTW. I have heard her crowing about mispronouncing someone's name, because this person had corrected her, so she knew it would upset them.)

To all those levelling "ungrateful" accusations willy billy, bugger off.

It's just a rant to let off steam. Not many of us never do that.

I could never have kept my house to the standards my MIL would have wanted. She even polished the cat flap and the children's wellies. She would do the washing up and then put the clean dishes into the dishwasher. She had a cleaner every week and still cleaned the whole place every day. She used to clean frantically just before the cleaner was due to arrive too. I never did work out why she actually employed a cleaner in the first place.

She occasionally implied that I was a slattern because I never would iron DH's boxer shorts and socks.

We are all allowed to find this sort of thing irritating and rant-worthy.

If that makes me ungrateful in the eyes of some obviously perfect souls on here then so be it. I couldn't care less.

willy nilly. Stupid autocorrect!!!

Angelika This My MIL loves to help and I'm grateful for it. But what I can't be dealing with is being told that the laundry she took out of the machine and dried and folded neatly needs to be put away the moment I walk through the door. together with the OP sums up my life except it my own mum rather than MiL who causes the laundry stress.

DM lives abroad and comes back to stay with us for a month every year. It's lovely having her and throughout most of the year I miss her so much but how I wish she would step away from the laundry basket! The thing is, she's so particular about her own stuff. I know she would never just chuck it all in at home but that's what she does to us. Our whites are sludgy, bras stretched with damaged hooks and underwires after being on a 3-hour industrial wash and woollens shrunk including a favourite and quite expensive jumper I had coveted for a long time, DH had unexpectedly bought me it for my birthday and I had worn it twice before it was shrunk to doll size. It was then out of stock and I never did get a replacement.

We have an ongoing battle about towels. According to my mother, it is terrible that I don't have "good" fluffy guest towels so every time she visits she will head out and buy some - and then promptly ruin them herself, and then complain that we don't have naice towels...

And yes, just as bad as that is the fact that the first thing she says to greet me as I walk in the door after work is "I've done six load of washing today. You need to fold them and put them away. Now and then won't relax until I have done it. Or I'll walk into our bedroom to find clothes piled everywhere - covering the bed, dressing table, piled on the floor... All for me to sort through and put away.

And, despite doing all this laundry on a daily basis, she will invariably leave my workout clothes in the basket because she doesn't know what to do with them. I have three sets of leggings/shorts, t-shirts and sports bras and go to the gym every working day. I need to wash/wear these on rotation but the whole routine goes out the window when dm is here.

This thread is cathartic. I love DM dearly but I just want her to leave the laundry alone. There are plenty other areas of housework she could happily get stuck into if she wanted . I just want to control my own laundry routine, in my own time.

november and many others.
maybe lockable washing mashines should be invented.

I had a holiday guest/friend stay as we live by the seaside and she spent the first day emoting my washing basket - via my bedroom ensuite - and went and brought a washing line - I don't have one because I didn't want one - and zig zagged it all round the garden at child next height!!!

Really pissed me off was their kids had spent a boring day watching TV when they could've been down the beach -

Really sad!