To not invite DD friends parents in to our home?

[SnailMale]

We live on the outskirts of an affluent area .

DD attends a school where all the parents are professionals and are quite wealthy. We are effectively the odd ones out !

Our house is rented and it needs quite a lot of work doing to it . The garden needs weeding and is half finished with old toys / furniture outside awaiting removal from previous tenants .

Our stair carpets need replacing (awful bright red and paint marks all over ) .

The wood flooring is cheap but ok. Our couch is old and marked but we can't afford to replace it .

DD was invited to a friends for lunch a few days ago and when I went to collect her , their house was pristine .

Expensive furniture , clean , tidy , not a weed in sight or even a mark on the walls .

DD has invited her friend over tomorrow and despite my offers to collect her / drop her home , the mother is insistent she will pick her up.

I'm mortified . Our house is not dirty , it's just nowhere near perfect .

Would you judge me? Would it affect whether you would allow your child to come over in future ?

I would never judge someone because of the size of their house... Assuming your home is genuinely not smelly and/or very dirty (lots of pet hair, piles of washing up etc), you have nothing to worry about. Could you get a nice throw and a couple of new cushions if the sofa is very marked? Somewhere like Wilkos or BHS where it needn't cost a lot.

It sounds like the friends mum is doing the decent thing by not wanting you to be inconvenienced by having to take her child back, I'm sure she's not coming round to snoop!

Be friendly, confident and smile. DONT apologise for your house (people often only notice faults once you point them out!), and be ready to offer a cup of tea and a biscuit

Please don't be embarrassed. Chin up and be brave.

DD has a lovely friend whose circumstances are different to ours. The girls are great friends and my DD loves going there. I think shared values and morals are more important.

I know the mum felt embarrassed as she apologised for the state of the house. It's not dirty just a little shabby around the edges.

The mum is super creative and does the most amazing arts and crafts with the girls and is so much less uptight than I am.

Here's the thing, I admire her greatly for holding it all together and going to Uni at the same time. I feel a wus in comparison.

With Owllady on this people not things!

Been unfriendly would put me off. Scruffy/cluttered/old wouldn't- That's my house after all!

Nice cuppa from a clean mug is good. Oh and If you're at mine lift the magazines off the sofa and make yourself at home :)

I would think that DD's Mum is trying to be helpful by offering to collect her daughter, not trying to catch you out

In her shoes, I'd be a bit surprised not to be invited in, and might wonder if you were trying to hide something

Wouldn't bother me. If you offered me coffee in a stained/chipped cup I'd be miffed though. yes that happened to me this week

I once dropped DD off at a nicely decorated house where 2 dogs were fighting in the kitchen and the teenage sister was smoking while holding her baby.

Yes, I judged.

But I couldn't really care about your stair carpet as long as you were friendly.

This sort of post makes me really sad. We're fortunate to have a reasonably big house in a nice area. I would never look down my nose at other people but a few times recently when I've visited dc's friends houses they made comments about their own home as if they think maybe I will be somehow judging like "oh it's an ugly house but we bought it because of xyz". The other week someone apologised to me for parking their car on my drive because it's old!

It really guts me to think others think I care about that kind of stuff or even notice. Maybe I should show them the state of our bedrooms and bathrooms.

I am always a bit disappointed not to be invited into big houses which look like they are nicely decorated though. [nosy] [shallow]

Don't be ashamed you've nothing to be ashamed of so don't act like you have it will teach your kids bad things! No one of any value would judge you for not having the money to do up your house as well as them and the few people that would, believe me, are not worth your energy or time as they are bad people. Have respect for yourself and show your children that value lies in the type of person you are, not on if your carpet is stained or your wood floor is a bit on the cheap side!! xx

I know exactly how you feel OP.

I went to see someone the other day and their house was pristine. They've been doing it up so solid oak floors, new wood burner, new bathroom, etc.

My house needs new carpets downstairs, there's 6 of us so it gets messy at times and we need to redecorate the living room.

She can never come here!

Having been at both ends of the scale I wouldn't care at all
A friend is a friend

I used to live in a "pristine" flat that I owned, now I live in a crappy rental... Been both sides, and can honestly say I would not judge :) I know how it is though, but you just have to try to not worry about it.

I judge smoke, drugs, bare wires, filth, aggressive dogs.
I do not judge mess, scruffiness, size.

It wouldn't make any difference to me. I'd be more uncomfortable in a place that was so much like a show home with white carpets that you couldn't relax!

If they judge then it says far more about them than you.

I really don't care what a place looks like so long as it's not dirty or smelly.

I include pet hair in the dirty definition but I appreciate some will take exception to that. I don't care. I'd rather you came to my house than I had to sit on your doggy sofa.

I do of course have plenty of friends with pets (including dogs and cats) who have clean homes that don't smell.

Offer her a cup of tea. She probably won't notice anything about your house (and it's probably not that bad anyway). She'll just notice that you're friendly and welcoming. I wouldn't care if someone had bright pink Paisley walls with red door frames, no doors and a luminous orange carpet (although we did live with no bathroom floor at one stage - and I do mean none - the toilet sat on the floor joists and there was a drop through to the floor below - obviously before kids!)

We're the family with the "lived in" house. Most of the time play dates happened at our house, I always invited parents in and was always told how much their kids enjoyed coming to ours. The house was clean but there were toys and pets and a few bits of furniture that had seen better days. Kids don't care (well, there was that wee boy on a recent thread) and parents are happy if their kids are happy and safe.

It would not bother me in the slightest. I never invite people round for the opposite reason my house makes people feel uncomfortable it's big and worth a lot of money I was brought up on a council estate and dp is entirely self made and originally from a pretty ropey area I feel uncomfortable having people I don't know very well round I worry they think I'm showing off It's not pristine though! I always meet people at play centres etc... I just feel more comfortable that way.

Not only would it not matter, I would positively embrace it

I always feel a bit unrelaxed in a pristine recently refurbished house.

Whereas a house with ancient carpet, a dog on the sofa and toys everywhere to me is more inviting/relaxing.

I mean that.