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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

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

750 replies

Creativemode · 21/09/2016 14:49

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.

OP posts:

flippinada · 21/09/2016 21:17

Oh, I've just worked out the vacuum cleaner thing! .

Muddledupme · 21/09/2016 21:18

So many of our guests think I'm crazy because my dogs have to chase their tails in both directions on the doormat before they are allowed in. It's so much more effective than bending over with a towel to dry their feet and they never bring mud in.

paxillin · 21/09/2016 21:18

I have a relative who has three sorts of towels: darks for bottom half of body, lights for top half and brights for hair. Much hilarity when I emerged from the bathroom with a "bum towel" turban .

Albadross · 21/09/2016 21:18

Why doesn't Greece just install bigger pipes?!

zen1 · 21/09/2016 21:22

A mother and baby group friend invited a group of us with similar aged babies (all under two at the time) to her house for coffee. I asked if there was somewhere I could change DS (had brought my own mat etc) and she said, "yes, but you can't put the nappy in my bin because I can barely stand the smell of my own child's nappy". I had to take it away with me.

BelladiNotte · 21/09/2016 21:24

When we lived in Switzerland, we started off in a block of flats, think there must have been 20-22. Rule was that no loos were to be flushed after 10pm.
So then we moved to a house. First Sunday oh did the usual Sunday morning thing and washed the car. Neighbours came out (both sides) and introduced themselves and we all had a chat. Nice.
Next day the cops came round. Nice neighbours had reported us for washing the car on a Sunday.
God, I hate the bleedin Swiss and was over the moon when we left. Didn't think their chocolate was all it was cracked up to be, either,

Gwenhwyfar · 21/09/2016 21:25

"I knew a family that had the "good" room (known as the parlour)"

This is also common in Wales.

We also only used the front door for visitors who didn't know us well enough to use the side/back door , which I presume is quite common.

lalalalyra · 21/09/2016 21:25

When I was a teenager my best friend's Dad (who was odd) had a rule of no jumpers tied around the waist in the house. To the point that 17-year-old me, with a rucksack on my back ready for a weekend camping, was told to remove my jumper whilst waiting on my friend in the kitchen or wait out in the garden. I was then banned from the house for being disrespectful for choosing to wait in the garden because I didn't want to faff about with my rucksack to take it off for the sake of 3/4 minutes.

His children weren't allowed to stay out later than 2am and weren't allowed to go to parties or anything after being out. They had to tell him where they were going and go there, and only there. He used to come to the nightclub in our town, collect them all at 1.45am (me and friend were 18/19, her sisters were older and her brother had been married and divorced, but still was subject to the rule!) and then he locked the door when he got home. Would have been fine, but they absolutely were not allowed to stay out later.

They also had a rule about pocket money. All the adults in the house got the same pocket money each week. Which meant all wages handed over to parents and then pocket money given back. He genuinely doesn't understand why he has no relationships with his children now.

dowhatnow · 21/09/2016 21:27

I must have reasonable friends and neighbours. I've nothing more to add than the no shoes in house rule and the no drinks on coasters rule which I think is fine and my rules too

Peppapogstillonaloop · 21/09/2016 21:28

Listsand budgets there was a really sad story in the guardian family section last week about a guy who had been abused at boarding school, he couldn't have Jaffa cakes anywhere in the house or near as that was what they were given after each abuse.. I'm sure that bears no relevance to your story but just made me think of it

Lottahugz · 21/09/2016 21:30

I know this neighbour who would not allow any guest to turn up at her house if it's just the DH home ~ trust issues aplenty!

starsorwater · 21/09/2016 21:39

Put the coffee table on the sofa before you go to bed.

It was to stop the dog climbing onto the sofa in the night. Everything revolved round stopping the dog doing things like the Christmas tree was always in a playpen and the letterbox was taped up. You'd think it would have been easier to train the dog. Shoes on a high shelf by the door, that was another.

missmoz · 21/09/2016 21:39

Not the weirdest, but a family friend used to have a "children's table". This wasn't for celebrations or big meals when everyone couldn't fit, but just regular small plastic table next to the average sized table the two adults sat at.

When we visited, as a teenager, you had to sit at the small plastic table with your knees around your ears. You also had to go to the loo before you ate and eat a different children's meal of apple slices, cubes of cheese etc.

GlomOfNit · 21/09/2016 21:40

Well, I must be a nightmare, because I used to request the No Flush after small and easily woken baby went to bed! I wouldn't be so precious now, but back then sleep was so, so precious. (to me anyway. Not, apparently, to my baby.) I think I peeved my mother by asking her not to talk loudly in the kitchen of the Welsh cottage we once rented together, because my 4 mo baby was asleep in a sort of open loft bedroom directly above. you often lose it a bit when you have a small PFB and a tenuous grip on reality or more than 3 consecutive hours' sleep.

WRT putting soiled loo paper in a little bin, I've always done this when I'm in a country where the local plumbing demands it, and would consider it the height of bad manners not to. You might not suffer yourselves but someone along the line probably will ... Things are different Abroad, it's part of travelling, innit?

Cyprus is not in Greece, BTW.

riceuten · 21/09/2016 21:40

Riceuten have you told her about energy saving light bulbs?

Yes, they "give you cancer", apparently ! My batshit mental S-i-L told her that (she's an 'alternative' type). As does milk. And pork. And toast. And talcum powder etc etc

SabineUndine · 21/09/2016 21:44

In Germany I lived with a retired couple for a few months. The woman was fixated on the fact that I didn't remember to put the loo seat down when I used it.

Only time I stayed with my brother and SIL I arrived for the weekend at 7pm on a Friday to be told they'd had their tea at their usual time and did I want a sandwich.

thefairyfellersmasterstroke · 21/09/2016 21:44

The toaster in the cupboard comment upthread reminded me of a relative we stayed with whose DH permitted nothing other than the kettle to be "out" on the kitchen worktops. Every other appliance had to be put away the second you were finished with it, so water purifier, toaster etc. all had to be put in a cupboard. It's not as if there wasn't any space - it was a massive kitchen with yards of work surface, all completely empty bar the kettle.

When we stocked up with a big shop for them as part of our visit, we naturally plonked the 6 or 7 bags on the tops when we got in, and they were immediately grabbed and put on the floor. Even if you were chatting over a cuppa while making dinner you couldn't lay your cup down in between sips, unless you went into the dining room and laid it on the table there. You couldn't even put the empty cup down beside the sink, it had to go straight in the dishwasher. It looked like no-one lived there.

NowThatsClosureJen · 21/09/2016 21:45

My mum won't allow people to wash their hands in the kitchen sink as she says it will make the food and cutlery "taste of soap"

[befuddled]

Stellar67 · 21/09/2016 21:45

MIL makes us "squidgee" the shower after a shower. A window wiper thingy. I wipe it with a facecloth (rebel).

imnotreally · 21/09/2016 21:47

My dad won't let you have lights on. Well you're allowed the table lights on but not the overhead ones. Too bright and use too much electricity. In the winter it's horrid sitting in the dark! And if you turn lights on to go to the loo he follows you around turning them off

SabineUndine · 21/09/2016 21:47

Thefishewife My grandma's 'front room' was also a showpiece: bookshelf, china cabinet, Toby jugs. I wasn't allowed in there on my own until I was about 10. The real life of the house was in the back room, attached to the kitchen, from which she could talk to my grandad as she cooked etc.

e1y1 · 21/09/2016 21:52

nowthatsclosure

I don't like people washing their hands at the kitchen sink . For hygiene reasons more than anything. But I don't get worked up if people do.

I don't have any barmy rules, besides no shoes in house. Promise

DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen · 21/09/2016 21:52

Why doesn't Greece just install bigger pipes?!

Yes, why don't they dig up the whole of the country just because a few tourists can't manage to put their paper in a bin which you empty every day? My Greek relatives think it's revolting we have our rubbish taken away every two weeks (they're not wrong!)

I lived there years and it's hardly a big thing to shove your paper in a lined bin

Going back to burning sanitary towels, I remember being at a friend's when I was 13 and I saw her give her mum a small bag which turned out to have her used ST's in. Her mum not only burned them in front of me but unrolled each one for further inspection....

littleprincesssara · 21/09/2016 21:52

Why doesn't Greece just install bigger pipes?!

Probably because replacing the infrastructure of an entire country would cost a fortune and involve major disruption. The Greek economy is not exactly buoyant. I'm not sure how it would even be practical.

Vvlgari · 21/09/2016 21:53

Re. the Greek pipes thing, I was freaked out by it at first but I visited Greece a lot in my 20s as I had friends there and found it was completely normal for locals. I met a few people with holiday lets who said the additional cost for plumbers to unblock pipes after guests ignored the instructions was pretty significant.

We stayed in a gite in the south of France this year where there were signs in the bathroom explicitly telling guests not to flush anything other than toilet paper. Unfortunately, the British guests staying there the week before had totally ignored this and flushed tampons, plastic wrappers and non-flushable wet wipes down the toilet. Thanks to them, we had no toilet for a day and the owner had to pay a plumber to come out on a bank holiday to fix it. So yeah, if you ignore the instructions you are a cunt of the first order and you're potentially ruining the holiday of the people to stay after you.

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