To not want to send clothes I've bought for my OH's kids back to their mother's house?

[Step0]

My OH lives with me and his 2 kids stay with us a few times a week.

My OH pays maintenance for the kids but his ex only works part time and money is tighter for her so a lot of the kids clothes are hand me downs. There is nothing wrong with this, having an older sister means most of my clothes were hand me downs as I grew up.

I have a pretty well paid job and earn more than my OH, I'm not rolling in it but I have more disposable income than my OH and his ex. We've had issues with the ex sending the kids with clothes that they don't like and refuse to wear or are on the small side, so I buy them clothes to wear when they are at ours. Nothing expensive, but just nice clothes that they like. My OH and I have also bought clothes for the kids and given them to the ex for the kids at hers.

AIBU to not want to the kids to wear the clothes I've bought for them to wear at ours, when they go home? My OHs ex isn't very organised and we wouldn't get the clothes back.

Ellen really? Your almost Uni age son is changing immediately he gets to his Dad's so that you can be certain of getting his clothing back? At his age he should be capable of organising that himself!

But someone has to provide the clothes they wear from house to the other. You can't send them naked! And why should it always be the mother?

The kids aren't made to get changed when they arrive, the issues we have are things like tantrums from the little girl in the mornings as mum has sent a dress that she hates and never wears at home or the tshirts/jeans are too small. Its not a deliberate thing with the mum, but the fitting/nice clothes are either dirty or in the ironing pile when she packs the bag so she send stuff that they don't normally wear at home. I appreciate I didn't make that clear in the first post. The kids have lots of nice clothes, a mix of hand me downs and new but due to this being an ongoing thing, I bought extra clothes to keep at ours. Thank you to everyone who gave advice on ways to make it better.

The child's clothing is the child's clothing! And once they have worn them, then those clothes should go with them...and they should organise their clothing themselves into their travel bag from the age of around 8-9.

Violet, read my post. This is what my exH has instigated. I just send my DC in clothes. (That I have bought)

This way, they don't have to be lugging overnight bags either.

My daughter keeps anything she buys for the step sons at her house. The children's mother has her own things for the boys. None of this backwards and forwards with clothing and stuff. Works well. They have 2 sets of school uniform. Drink bottles, lunch boxes, everything. 2 sets of sports things they need.

Mine went to their Dads in clothes from mine and came back in the same clothes. Saved all this agro. And was part of the divorce agreement.

We have to have a separate wardrobe at ours. It would be great if we could just share clothes, but it never works. Good stuff seems to disappear for weeks but the tatty small stuff appears regularly.
We bought SDD 6 vest tops enough for our holiday. They go back and forward which is fine, but when I went to pack SDD clothes there was only one in the drawer! I can assume she has been arriving without one and going home wearing one! We just cant afford to repeatedly to replace stuff. My DH has had to ask for stuff back in the past, but it can never be found.

Hi Step. No YANBU. I am in exactly the same position. We have my partners two children Friday -Sunday every week and the clothes his ex sends the boys in is an absolute disgrace. Pants so tight they can't button them up. Underpants four sizes too small they have cut into youngests skin. Shoes again way too small. Its actually upsetting seeing what they are made to wear. Along with this she has cleanliness issues and she doesn't bathe or shower the boys or wash clothes regularly. So when they come here on a Friday they smell to high heaven. No exaggeration its an awful smell so we have to bathe them as soon as they get here and wash their clothes separate to ours. Anything that doesn't fit goes straight in the bin. DP has told the ex hundreds of times this is not acceptable but its in one ear and out the other. We used to buy new clothes every week for them. As soon as they went back to mums we would never see them again. But this was because she was selling them online!! Now they have cheap and cheerful clothes that they go back home in. Anything decent stays here. As awful as it is that's the way it is. To be honest she doesn't work but has a brand new car and horses galore, which is what sticks in my throat when the kids are walking round in rags.

I get why it might feel a bit unfair to the kids and mum, but YANBU... as a single mum who visits my own mum a lot with a toddler in tow, I can definitely see why it makes sense to keep a second set of clothes at each house.

Maybe set a minimum of X number of trousers, tops, dresses etc that need to be kept as the 'Your House Clothes' to make sure they've always got enough clean clothes with you, and then agree that they can take anything else home with them?

You sound lovely, how nice of you to be buying them nice clothes. My step-mum did this when I was younger and I always really appreciated it. I did get to take them home with me, but I only spent weekends with my DF and SM and didn't have my own space there or anything so it made sense.

My mum buys lots of clothes for my daughter and we tend to keep a lot of them at her house. It means that we don't have to worry about packing too much when we come to visit.

However some of the stuff we do bring home with us, e.g. if DD really needs something in a bigger size and this is really useful for us.

Maybe try to keep a 'core' wardrobe at your house all the time and apart from that let them do their own thing with the other items of clothing so they get to take some of them home?

I can see both sides here.

DSD has different clothes for our house and her mums. And I get that it could be annoying if you buy something in particular that you like and then you don't get to see it again, but at the end of the day it belongs to the child. We are not overly precious about DSD wearing clothes that belong with us when going back to her mum, and vice versa. Although both sides are always careful to return clothes. This is only really an issue in the school holidays because during term-time all 'handover' for DSD is done via the school so we don't end up with each others clothes anyway.

But about once a month, I will do a round-up of all clothes we have at ours that need to go back to her mums, and her mum will do the same, and we'll swap. I'd suggest doing the same if it bothers you that much.

You are being awful.

Who are the clothes for? The kids? Or you...so you can feel superior that they have "nice clothes" when they're with you.

Nail on head I think.

Reverse I think...

Some of the messages on here really make me cringe, there's real step-mother bashing and I'm quite shocked by it .

Yes, it's almost inevitably a difficult dynamic when families split up and there are step-parents in the picture, but that doesn't mean everyone's out to get everyone else or that step-mothers are evil (especially when they're going out of their way to make a contribution to family life that they're not obliged to make).

I get where you're coming from OP.
Dsd used to come and stay with no change of clothes at all. Her mother would insist on getting her clothes back. She wouldn't leave and cause a scene in front of dsd if we didn't hand it all back.
We used to buy clothes and they'd vanish, she'd be dropped off two weeks later with nothing.
New toys would go the same way too.
We had to instigate stuff staying at ours in the end. It did mean stuff got grown out of or not played enough but it was getting very frustrating and expensive. In the winter she'd arrive with no coat etc.
DH's ex just used to laugh at us for it.

I don't think YABU. My exDH buys clothes for the DDs that stay at his house. If they wear them home, I return them. I expect him to do the same. He often doesn't.

I share the care of my kids, and while my ex and I normally try to return the clothes we have bought for them, occasionally things do get mixed up... TBH I think we both gain about as much as we lose lol.

However, if you're buying the kids new clothes, send them back to the mum in them, and then find the kids return dressed in ill-fitting, worn out stuff, it's not really on IMO. In which case I would get the kids changed when they arrive, put their mums stuff through the wash immediately, and then send them home in the mums nice clean clothes.

I swear some posters just read the word stepmother and start foaming at the mouth!

user1472640125 Your OH needs to stop enabling abuse of his DC and apply for custody.
I am appalled at all the silly buggery that goes on. If a DC spends 3 days with you, you need to buy 3/7ths of a child's wardrobe plus extra wellies and coat and maybe a spare hoodie. ie you really need to be buying half or more of the amount of clothes that a one home child needs.
Child arrives in outfit one, child leaves in outfit 2, both houses still have roughly the same quantity of clothes at each house. When I as an adult lived between two houses, I needed more clothes.
Will people please stop taking out issues they have with their DexP on the kids.
If your DC is being that neglected by their other parent, do something about it.

When they come in your house make them strip out of their clothes, put on your nicer ones and then change again when they go home?!
Believe it or not I know of a few people who actually do this when their kids come to stay for the weekend.

IMO If the DC is kicking up a fuss about the clothes being horrible, too small etc etc when with you, I would be very surprised if this isn't being done on purpose, as she will be moaning to her mother about it too.

As a SM I always make sure my DSC (infant age) go back in the same clothes which have been washed. The clothes are lovely from both houses and their DM chooses the DSC's outfits with care so I wouldn't want to have the clothes at our house if she'd planned an outfit (they're often bought by DGP's so they like to see them in them when visiting- the same at our house). School uniforms sometimes get more prolific at one house or another due to holiday/ non uniform days so every month or so we take stock and exchange to make sure we have enough at both. I think I'd do this no matter the quality of the clothes to keep an order to things.

Hi, step mum here.

What we do is DSS arrives in clothes from his mum's, then next day wears clothes from our house and keeps wearing 'our' clothes until the day he goes back to his mums when he pits the clothes he came in back on. That way there is no issue with needing to pack/shuttle clothes between houses. Couldn't you do that?

If the kids are young surely they can just be told that these clothes stay here and they wear their other clothes back home.

Or if the clothes they come in are really bad, maybe just buy some really cheap basics you can send them back in rather than special dresses you've chosen together or whatever.