To not want to accept everything that is offered to me?!

[mamacien]

Long story short. I've been a student in a horrible student house, I've had a cramped rented flat with DP and DD, now we have bought a lovely first house. We aren't well off at all but live an enjoyable simple lifestyle.
Now my DM has never had money troubles but has always made out she's extremely hard done by. Her house is a mish mash of odd furniture and clutter (which is absolutely fine it's her house) because she accepts ANYTHING people give her. When me and DS were growing up and had a sort out she would go through the bags for anything she could keep for herself (also absolutely fine) etc etc, this is the way she has always been!
My flat was a bit of a mish mash because we weren't interested in spending any money on a rented place when we knew we were going to buy a house. Now that I've moved a number of people have very kindly offered me furniture, accessories, baby things (another due in July) but I have turned everything down. I quite simply don't want other people things, I want to buy my own things, I just want exactly what I want in my house. It would be a waste of both the gifts and effort to accept these things when I know I don't want or need them! Now DM has made me feel really guilty and rude for not wanting others old furniture "I must have more money than sense" "very ungrateful and insulting" "she never imagined I would be a snob". Surely there's nothing wrong with having different priorities to her? I don't have more money than sense, I just enjoy spending the money I do have on making MY home what's I see as beautiful, rather than what somebody else liked. Should I actually be accepting these gifts to spare people's feeling? I didn't even see it as an issue until the numerous comments about how wrong I am :/

Yanbu. just keep working on kind and gentle way to get the message across.

I would never tell anyone I don't want their things because I don't like their taste in curtains

You'd be sorely tempted if you saw some of the stuff my ILS have offloaded on us. Even years down the line DH won't part with these things for fear of causing offence .

I like inexpensive, simple, light, modern furniture but have somehow ended up with a well intentioned but ghastly collection of dark, carved wooden Victorian & Southern American style 'pieces'.

Start as you mean to go on - with a firm but polite 'no'.

Things that you take as temporary have a habit of ending up permanent. Just. Say. No.

Thank you for all the replies everyone. I definitely don't think I'm being unreasonable now. Just started doubting myself as after 20+ years of arguments my mum had gotten reasonably good at keeping her opinions to herself shall we say haha and this seemed to really hit a nerve for some reason! Sounds like many of you have actually had it much worse than I have in the hand me down department

nope YANBU.. when I moved into my house I had to buy all my furniture on my own and pretty much all at once.

I was very grateful for one or two things that were offered to me that I liked but I had a particular friend who seemed to store things they no longer wanted and then insisted I took them.
He offered me a rusty metal framed bed, white and blue Christmas trees (it was just before xmas when I moved). I said thanks but no thanks and he got huffy because he was saving them for me rather than throwing them out. I hadn't actually asked him to save them for me!?

Then I mentioned that one day I would love to have a dishwasher but couldn't afford it right now so when his mum was selling a slimline dishwasher he insisted on bringing it round.. I politely declined because a) there was a washing machine in place of where the dishwasher would go as the plan was to make a utility room eventually where the washing machine would move to, and then put a dishwasher In its place, which he was well aware of, and b) it was a standard sized gap not a slimline gap so I'd need a standard sized dishwasher. Again I was being ungrateful and that I could store it in the bathroom until I needed it and I need to take these opportunities when they arise and not be so fussy!

Bonkers some people....

Absolutely don't take the stuff. Your mother is validating/will validate her collecting/hoarding behaviour by 'Oh mamacien ** could do with that - of course we'll take it'. If you start accepting things she'll likely become worse. (Two households to collect for. )

Does she try to influence you in other things as well?

I wish I was better at saying no. I'm truly awful at it. My MIL is wonderful and lovely but she's also quite a hoarder and loves a random charity shop bargain.

She often presents us with random crap bargains she's picked up and whilst my brain is saying 'thank you MIL but we honestly don't need 12 mismatched glass tumblers' my mouth just says 'that's really kind, thank you.'

I want to punch myself when I do it.

Oh this thread! I left home at 19, and was 36 years old with 3 kids and had done 2 more house moves before i finally got to chose and buy my very own sofa for the very first time.

I'd gratefully accepted and used 3 'hand-me-down' second hand suites from family before that. None of them styles or colours i would have chosen.

When i finally got to go out and chose and buy my own sofas my mother acted as if i was purchasing a gold plated potato peeler! Why wasn't i happy with someone else's cast offs for the rest of my life? It's a sensible colour, and you can sit on it, what's the problem? The decadence of it. Worse still - it's leather! (which for some reason best known to my mother is akin to selling your soul to the devil)

12 years on from that I am happy to say i am now on my second 'chosen by me' suite. And - steady yourself - it's ... CREAM!

Worse than leather if that's even possible

YANBU OP

Oh it's not always easy, Gwen, you're right. Hoarders can often be charming, warm and wonderful people whom you don't like to say No to because you think they're just being kind and thoughtful.

(Well they are being kind and thoughtful, to be fair - it's just that, in my experience, they're being that to themselves and not to you.)

zosebrina lucky for me it's only DM insisting I take these things and not the actual owners, she's easy to say no to/ignore completely haha! cozietoesie my goodness yes! I love her very much and we normally get along just fine now that I'm older and independent but she's still a pushy pain in the arse whenever I don't want to do things her way! It's just a lot easier now that she can't follow me around the house nagging

Then that's a double 'don't take it'. She'll possibly use the 'stuff' as a way back into your household.

eponaswilddaughter I just laughed out loud at gold plated potato peeler This is exactly how I felt when I replaced my mismatched novelty mugs with cups and saucers! You had to pour drinks into your mouth from a height to avoid cutting your lips on the shocking number of chips but I was the lunatic for binning them (I'm still not forgiven 6 months later)!

I can understand what she's saying but yanbu if you want to wait till you can buy things to your own taste.
I assume you've not been rude in your refusals so why is she so convinced you're being insulting?
It's your house.. stand your ground.
And congrats for getting on the ladder !

With baby stuff I would probably accept because they get through so much stuff. Would do so with the proviso that if I ended up not needing it/once baby had grown out of it, original donor was happy for me to pass it on to someone else who needed it.

I have been in a very similar situation to yourself. Been living together for 10 yrs with my husband and moved to our 'forever home' last year. Basically just got rid of the last lot of hand me down stuff to furnish our house how we want. My parents muttered something about being a 'showhome' when I continually turn down any offers of any more furniture. I'm no snob, we're not well off and I save where I can everywhere but finally having to do my house as I want it has been so lovely. I feel incredibly lucky. We made mistake of basically taking anything and everything offered to us previously. I think I probably did it to be kind and of course to be frugal. Been pain getting rid of it all in the end.
Decorate and furnish till your hearts content. ENJOY!

My husband's family are a bit like this, with a side order of 'if we give you this stuff it makes room for us to buy nicer new stuff'. It drives me crazy. Over the years I've got a bit better at saying no thank you, but often now I end up taking stuff because they're desperate to get rid of it with a caveat of 'that's beautiful but I don't think we have room for it, but I'll drop it in to the Heart Foundation furniture shop / local women's shelter' etc. The bummer is when the stuff is clearly not fit for purpose and it feels like I'm basically being co-opted to do the tip run they can't be arsed to do

That said, I inherited my mum in law's (perfectly working but not her chosen colour) Kitchen Aid mixer so it's worth the odd trip to the tip in trade off in my book

I think people who do this are validating their own decisions and it comes from an old fashioned mindset. Often;

1. They're making room for new stuff themselves and by giving the old away they feel less guilty at being so "extravagant".

1. Or they accepted everything when they were starting out and feel you should do the same ie. They're jealous you are standing up for yourself and not doing the same as they did.

1. Some people struggle to give away/chuck stuff that has nothing wrong with it ( looking at my DM who refused to give a perfectly good analogue TV to a charity because "there was nothing wrong with it" despite us explaining that it would obsolete in a few months due to digital changeover, the charity could have used it for a bit and she had it in a cupboard. And of course charities want good stuff not broken crap! My mum has hoarding tendencies and her argument so often is there is nothing wrong with something/ its too good for the charity shop. I cannot get her to see that is exactly why it should go if she doesn't want it. It makes her feel better to give it to someone she knows.)

Whichever it is for your dm yanbu to have exactly what you want in your home. People who are offended by your refusal aren't giving the stuff to be kind they are doing it to make themselves feel good, especially if they ask where it is if they don't see it at your house.

Yanbu

Mil drove 800km to bestow on us the worlds ugliest dresser, random 70s 'George and mildred' style furniture and accessories and other tchotchkes. All are hideous and all we'd politely declined. She wanted to hire a van and give us three, forty year old mattresses...

The dresser squats like a toad in my front room and I plot it's eviction.

The absolute icing on the cake was her criticising the house for being cluttered, 'you have too many things'

I make them stay in the from room when they visit.

I would be the exact same - don't beat yourself up, I think it's the older generation as I can imagine that's what my mum would say. The old generation will ALWAYS think there is 'somewhere I can put that' hahaha

My mum still tells me I'm materialistic to this day (when I went though a phase of a year when I was what? 14 wanting brands over own-brands etc.)...... Not realising I am now 23 and only drive a little 107 and would be happy living in a treehouse!

Don't take it to heart, you know what you're doing :)

YANBU. When I was pregnant people (elderly rich neighbours) kept giving me their grandchildren's old bits, ie. a rusty, filthy highchair, a very ugly bouncer, etc etc. I accepted them with silent but absolute fury that they thought stuff that wasn't fit to Ebay (yes okay, they might be too old and rich for Ebay) was fit for me. Now I would just say, oh, that's okay, I've got such and such in mind already.
If it's stuff that's easy to get rid of and you really don't want to risk offending someone, take it and then charity shop it. But furniture?! Too much trouble.

You know what makes it a lot easier?

Very very much easier?

Move 12,000 miles away 😁

but try not to get too many well meaning friends before you buy your house 😁

YANBU. They are effectively using you as their recycling centre, which is probably a lot more convenient for them...

YANBU!!!

I have similarly turned down furniture from my DM. She talked about it as though I was rejecting family heirlooms that she had been saving for me when in reality it consisted of cheaply made faux-vintage type stuff, all mis-matched and much disliked by me since I was a child growing up in our house full of it. I simply have completely different taste and however polite I was about it I was told I was being selfish.

Fast forward a year or so and most of the furniture in question disappeared from my dm's house one day and she confessed that she had finally got rid of the heavy fusty old furniture to a colleague. So when she wanted me to take it, it was an heirloom, when she gave it to a colleague it was "junk" lol! That's the other reason people try to palm furniture off onto you, it's cheaper and less hassle than taking it to the dump or using freecycle etc...

We got called by dh's Uncle who rather irately wanted to know when we were collecting the furniture he had for us. The furniture had belonged to his dd, who had asked mil if we might like it; mil had said yes without consulting us and in fact hadn't even told us!!
Part of it was an ancient hi fi unit with spaces to store your records, there were parts missing and it had been cut down to fit in with their other units. We Didn't have a hi fi and it was no use for anything else
We didnt want it and got rid and have been in trouble ever since!!

I begrudgingly acceptable MILs dining table and chairs, which she could hardly bare to part with and wanted back if we ever wanted to get rid of it, mustn't be thrown out, much too precious. Of course we were only offered it because she was having new and when we eventually managed to say we were getting a new set she had no where to put it, it sat in her garage for ages and then went to the tip. She wanted a new set but could only justify it to herself by keeping it in the family. I would never accept anything else, unless I actually wanted it.