I said to my mum that I was ashamed of her. She was angry and upset.
My reasons were:
- she takes piles of paper towels from public bathrooms and uses them as toilet paper because she thinks buying toilet paper is a waste of money. There is no toilet paper in the house, only paper towels from outside. These are hard and uncomfortable. I said it was stealing but she said it wasn't because it was free for everyone to use. She said she was being practical and trying to save money when she can.
- she doesn't want to throw anything away even though it isn't useful anymore, because she 'paid good money for them'. e.g. clothes that she bought but didn't wear, old children's clothes which I outgrew 20 years ago, old pencils and pens etc. Her house has three rooms (living room, and 2 bedrooms) filled with bin bags, old furniture, crates etc. You can't walk through the corridor, due to old stuff and can't use the rooms. I said that she should sort it out and give it to charity, but she flew into a rage. I managed to organise one bedroom in order to stay in it.
- she doesn't eat anything other than cereal and milk, or chocolate, because she can't afford or is too lazy to go out to the supermarket to buy fresh food. She thinks that cereal has enough vitamins.
- I was resentful as well because growing up, my mum didn't bother to cook or buy food, and therefore we either went without dinner or just ate cereal. I wasn't given much money for food at school, only £1, so I usually ate a plate of plain pasta without sauce. We didn't really have healthy food.
-when I was younger, my sister and I only had showers once a week. We changed clothes about 1-2x a week, including uniforms. Nowadays my mum only has showers once a week, or even less and she thinks it's normal.
-when I was younger, we also skipped school for various reasons: mum couldn't be bothered to walk us to school, we missed the bus, we went on roadtrips etc.
- my mum would teach us to be dishonest and she was proud of it, eg. not paying for train fares by hiding in the toilets, telling us kids off if we paid for train fares, not paying bills by hiding in the house when people came to the house to check the meter.
- she said she has no money to pay for my wedding (which is fine) but she says why should she pay for other people to fill their bellies with nice food? can I not get married, or maybe just get married overseas with no guests.
I think it's abnormal behaviour, but my mum thinks I am being a snob, and being ridiculous.