What's the weirdest house rule you've ever experienced as a house guest?

[Creativemode]

Just that really.

Mine is someone that wouldn't let me flush the toilet incase it woke their children.

Also another wouldn't let me go upstairs to the toilet incase the stairs creaked and woke their children (there was no downstairs toilet).

I had a school friend that wasn't allowed fish and chips in the house because of the smell.

Petting order of dogs. If you enter and pet dogs in incorrect order, they would fight

I understand the madness a lot better than I used to though. I am not naturally anal or tidy but I spend a lot of my life and energy trying to keep on top of mess, so when people do things that risk giving me extra work I get ragey.
If people eat all over the house and leave crumbs and we get mice again who is the person who is going to have to deal with them and clean up mouse poo and replace the things they have chewed? I am. So no, dd, you can't eat your crisps in the living room even though you say you will not make crumbs.
And while 70% of the furniture is ikea, the other 30% is lovely antiques so I want everyone to use coasters all the time please because I don't trust you all to remember which is which.

As a Maternity Nurse I have to go into lots of houses and follow the house rules but one that I left after a week was because I had to antibac my hands before touching him (fine) his clothes and go into his room and into the house but I also had to change my clothes before touching him and when doing chores had to iron babies clothes and sterilise bottles with Evian water and disinfect the washing machine with antibac before washing his clothes. My eczema flared up with so much antibac....

"Yep, misusing the vacuum cleaner had a pretty rank meaning behind the words. I was clutching my pearls, I can tell you. (And I still can't understand how nobody had a horrific accident getting a blowjob from a hoover, but I guess it takes all sorts.)"

3bags - I used to be a theatre nurse, and there was a story that did the rounds where I worked about a man who heard one could get a helluva blow job from a vacuum cleaner, so he went home, got his cylinder vacuum cleaner out of the cupboard, and prepared for bliss.

Unfortunately he had not paid proper attention to the details of the technique, and instead of using the hose, he unscrewed the guard over the air intake fan, and put his willy in there.

Into the air intake fan. Which sliced his willy up like a cucumber.

Apparently we managed to repair what was left, leaving him with a stump of penis.

This could be one of those apocryphal stories that goes round hospitals - but I believed it, at the time. It sounded very credible.

Taking your shoes off at the door (which I'm fine with and I think most people do this anyway) but then having to wear the slippers provided. Obviously every guest has different sized feet so it was a case of choose the ones that were the best fit and then shuffle about in them not knowing whose feet had been in them before

Lolling for a pair of black, knee length boots this year. I'm the owner of a right pair of chubby calves though and am tall. Found a great pair in Long Tall Sally but they're too skinny. Anyone found a solution to the same problem?

These rules are horrific! And being precious over words like 'poo'. I have visions of all their DCs growing up to be serial killers from growing up in such creepy housholds.

My DP insists that the washing up rack MUST be at a 90 degree angle to the draining board. He is certifiable sometimes about random things. His parents would not let him exercise any form of control and everything had to be in its proper place and used in the proper way and I think he's acting out.

households

SDT. No!

A friend's dad had to have all the mirrors in the house covered with a white sheet....

I was just thinking of this the other day as I remembered a friends house I went to, had some really messed up rules. No talking at dinner time. The one time families are supposed to come together to talk and spend time together yet they weren't allowed to talk. I found it horrible.
Another one is SIL's house (we don't stay there any more funnily enough) No showers unless it's the morning, before 10.
My Dad has some weird ones too. I once needed to stay overnight there and the rule was no talking while watching tv and once he goes to bed, everyone has to go to bed. And he goes to bed at 8.30pm. I don't know where he got these rules from because there weren't any strange ones while growing up.

*Paxillin..am I being daft..?, isn't your uncles brother also your uncle

I'm not sure, Overshoulderbolderholder. This is the brother of the husband of the sister of my mother . Uncle's brother? Uncle? Uncle in law?

When DS was a very small and difficult baby I had a no flushing while he's asleep rule because the toilet was right next to his bedroom and the next two hours of getting him back to sleep wasn't worth it. But we had an ensuite at the other end of the house and rarely had evening/overnight guests so it wasn't really a big deal.

Trying to think of other strange rules but none coming to mind.

Ouch at the hoover story.

A nurse friend of mine told me about a coffee table leg causing untold damage to a gentleman's intestinal tract, having been used inappropriately, but I assumed that was an urban legend, but hey, who knows?

I have little or no house rules and I detest the 'if it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down' thing. Get a quiet flush FFS. (Speaking as one whose children were never disturbed by a flushing toilet whatever the time of day)

I've heard that one as well SDTG. It's one of those things that might be a urban legend but then again just might have happened..

Thinking about odd rules, I wonder if some of them aren't made up specifically to put visitors off.

The thing I really don't get is people who want lodgers then impose all these ridiculous rules on them, like only being allowed to use the living room between 15:23 and 15:42 on the third Saturday of every month and so on. Why invite someone to live in your home if you don't want them there?

No bin in bathroom and sewerage by septic tank, so no sanitary products allowed down loo. They must be carried through house and burnt in Rayburn (like an Aga but far less posh). Sometimes one or other elderly members of family are sitting in armchairs by Rayburn and you have to walk past them, open the cast iron door, chuck your sanitary item in there, then slam cast iron door. Cue 'whoosh' as it incinerates.

Everybody pretends they haven't noticed except occasionally elderly dad says "What's that she's put in there?".

Oh I see???..As you were then

A lot of these rules seem to show a complete disregard, if not active contempt, for not just the comfort but the dignity of others in the normal exercise of their bodily functions. Bringing sanitary towels to a communal fire? Prohibiting emptying of bowels in certain toilets? Permitting flushing only during specified time windows (that's the only one I might be able to excuse for sleep-deprived parents only)? It's all about the convenience and maintenance of control of the host, in which case, why do they ever bother having guests?

I had a school friend back in the late 70s whose dad had to get up at 4am for work,so he went to bed at 8pm. Her dad was so concerned about any noise disturbing him that the whole family had to go to bed too,including her mum and her 2 brothers aged 18 and 22! My friend,who was 15,actually thought this was standard procedure until I enlightened her!

I feel bad as we have the no flushing rule once the baby is in bed. It's not worth the hours trying to get her to sleep.

I visited a friends family who said we weren't allowed in the kitchen as it's "not suitable for guests". No idea why as we were allowed around the rest of the house

Late husband and I had a lovely Chinese friend in Hong Kong. When he moved with his family to Canada, he begged and begged us to visit them there. Eventually we agreed - but when we got there, in one of the worst snow storms Toronto had ever known, we found his wife was far from being welcoming. She ordered in food for our first evening - her cooker in the kitchen was swathed on polythene and had never been used. Next day, she handed us the keys of her 4 x 4 and told us where the nearest place was where we could get breakfast, and that we were NOT expected back until AFTER dinner - she gave us list of pizza and pancake places in the vicinity. And told us to enjoy looking around the city!

First thing husband and I did was work out way to airport, battling through the snow, and changed our tickets so that we (hopefully) could leave in two days's time rather than in a week's time. Alas, because of weather, we were stuck for longer feeling totally unwelcome.

Finally, we were able to leave. But meanwhile, their admittedly gorgeous house had some curious system for underfloor heating, involving outlets on the floor, against the walls, with some sort of netting over them ... I THINK these were underfloor heating things, though husband wondering if they were something to do with dust extraction combined with some vacuum appliance. Anyway ... I was such a nervous wreck by then, from wife's icy attitude to us, plus us trying to pass the time all day in the city in heavy snow and feeling totally unwelcome (by the wife, not the obviously henpecked friend) that through inattention, I accidentally put my heel through one of the netting covered apertures and tore it.

Oh yes, before that, for a 'thank you for the (non) hospitality, because we liked the husband (a friend of my husband's for many years), we found a gorgeous and very expensive rocking horse that we thought would be lovely for the small daughter, aged three. But being sensible, we asked the parents first. The husband was delighted, but the wife was vehement - 'NO!' Her reason being that on the rare occasions that other small children visited with the mum's friends, they'd want a 'go' on the horse and her child 'didn't like sharing'.

emmy don't feel bad! I think having a 'don't make any noise that will disturb the baby' type rule when you're a sleep deprived parent is entirely understandable and perhaps even necessary to keep yourself sane.

I agree mommybunny. I think some of them will be a function of undiagnosed mental illnesses and/or control issues. Not much fun for the people who are forced to comply with them.

If I'm home alone I wont flush all day (unless i poop) same at night. I'm just conscious of my water bill but i don't expect guests to follow because they only use it a few times a month. Night time guests do but i think that's just habit not to flush at night.

I have been to someones house and they used family cloth (washable loo roll) thankfully they were forward thinking to provide loo roll for guests.