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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask what the strangest thing is that you've seen in a family home/life...

888 replies

purpleworms · 03/01/2019 12:06

...that to them was completely normal?

I have just seen someone asked this on an AMA on their Instagram. Their reply was walking around fully naked in front of parents/siblings/any family members.

While this is obviously okay for some, if it happened in a home I was visiting I'd be Shock but that's just because it's not the norm in my family.

I'm racking my brains but I don't think I've ever noticed anything! But people have such different ways/customs within their home lives and routines. We all regard our own as normal without ever really knowing if what's normal to us is strange to others!

OP posts:
OneStepMoreFun · 05/01/2019 13:04

When DH and I went to pick up our first kitten, soon after we married, we went to a house which you had to enter by stooping and walking through a low plastic pretend stone archway. First room you got to was wall to wall dolls all staring out at you.

We saw the kitten who was tiny, and said we wanted him and would come back when he wa sold enough to leave his mother. they said no, take him now or we'll drown him. So we did. We had to wean him and teach him how to wash - all the things he should have done with his mother. Very creepy.

Chouetted · 05/01/2019 13:13

I once visited someone with a small tree in their living room. Apparently it was a houseplant that got a bit out of hand. Grin

Saves on buying a Christmas tree, I suppose...

Bollockingfuck · 05/01/2019 13:44

@Shirleyphallus - They forgot you we’re coming and didn’t have enough food for everyone - hence having eaten ‘earlier’. Must have been really awkward!

Willbeatjanuaryblues · 05/01/2019 15:03

@bluebellpillow I thinks that's financial abuse isn't it.

The mum clearly had desperate mental health issues and all sorts ofthings going on. Nothing to do with money at all. I hope your friend is OK and has a healthy attitude to money now..

tablelegs · 05/01/2019 15:22

My MIL cooks next days meal the day before so Sunday dinner is cooked on Saturday. It's left in the pot/frying pan/casserole dish and left sitting out to be reheated the next night for dinner.

It could have been cooked on Saturday morning and left out until it's reheated at tea time on Sunday.

We don't ever eat there after my husband had horrendous food poisoning.

Gingerkittykat · 05/01/2019 15:26

My best friend growing up lived in weird environment.

They were not allowed in the living room, bar special occasions except to walk through to the dining room. There was no alternative living room, so the kids would be in their bedrooms, mum perched on a stool in the kitchen watching her TV and dad in his shed. Dad's shed was kitted out with leather chairs, a heater, top of the range TV and sky package while the living room had another portable TV. Mum and kids were allowed to stand at the door and talk to him, but not allowed inside but he would entertain in there.

They were pretty well off but dinner for the kids would be egg and chips, when dad was home (RAF) he would be cooked elaborate meals which he demanded mum cooked from scratch, she used to hide any jars she used. The kids often had a handful of coppers for school lunches.

Dad had a 2 seater sports car, obviously not suitable for a family of 4. He would occasionally take mum or one of the kids out, but you would see mum struggling home from the supermarket on foot (about 10 mins walk) with all her bags. There was obviously no family days out or holidays.

The son (they were twins) was treated like a little prince, while the daughter was given scraps of attention and money.

Dad pushed this non academic girl to college where she floundered and dropped out since it was just too much for her.

My friend eventually went missing/ ran away from home aged about 19 and was not heard of for 20 years. Mum was heartbroken, I used to bump into her regularly and she was always desperate to ask all of her daughter's friends if they had heard any news. She was desperate to know if she was a granny, and was eventually able to meet her grandchild when she was about 10.

I saw mum at the bus stop a few weeks ago, she had obviously had a stroke as her mouth was drooped. Still getting the bus, while no doubt her husband still had a car.

minimalisthoarder · 05/01/2019 15:44

My family were friends with another family when I was about 10. Kids all similar ages. We'd go over to theirs for a party (adults drinking, kids running a bit wild and in and out of the pool unsupervised in the dark, neighbours must have hated that family) on a Saturday night and stay over - I'd top and tail in a single bed with one daughter, my brother on the living room floor I think as they had two girls. I have no idea where my mother slept. My dad was working abroad at the time, he's never have allowed any of that.

It was a bit strange but maybe not that odd. But then I discovered the dad watching porn on the family TV in the living room in the middle of the afternoon, just openly as if it was normal. I had no idea what it was, but thought it was strange, asked one daughter who said their parents thought it was educational for them. The younger one used to show me her dad's soft porn magazines. I asked my mother about it and we never saw them again!

They were quite religious, the girls went to a convent school.

ChesterGreySideboard · 05/01/2019 15:48

The pp mentioning getting up in the cold with ice on the inside of the window and only having a coal fire - that was everyone I knew in the 70s.

ShirleyPhallus · 05/01/2019 15:51

Bollockingfuck they hadn’t forgotten we were coming, they text us during the day to ask what time we would be over!
Weirdly there was loads and loads of food, it was just like they’d eaten first so that they could wait on us. Very odd!

LloydColeandtheCoconuts · 05/01/2019 16:19

And another one from my MIL, but this might just be me. There's no bin in their bathroom so this means I have to take my used dental floss, sanitary towels etc out of the bathroom. When I took the soiled stuff to the bins I always hid them in the kid's dirty nappies Confused. Do people not have bins in their bathrooms? I don't think she's a fan of them because DP didn't like them in the bedroom when we first started living together! HmmGrin

cobblett36 · 05/01/2019 16:26

Someone I knew at school had a brand new cooker at the bottom of their stairs for years but in the kitchen they used a really filthy once white now yellow gas cooker. Never forgot it, also if their mum came home we would have to leave the house.

poundoflard · 05/01/2019 16:31

my bestf was youngest one of 5 girls, they had a spare /best living room that no one used just 7 of them and me crammed everyone into the dining /living room.
When I was about 9? maybe we used to sit by the open fire poking the coal in the grate when one day her mum came down stairs with a used sanitary towel and threw it into the fire. I sat staring at this steaming hot red thing ( the size of a loaf of bread in those days folks!) hissing and spitting right in front of my eyes. At such a tender age I had never seen one before used or otherwise, my mum was a real prude (she has never sat me down to have the 'talk') ,and at 50 ,4 kids later I think I'm too old for it now!
But I shall never forget that evening Envy (not envy PUKE)

Motoko · 05/01/2019 16:44

My best friend growing up lived in weird environment.

No, she grew up in an abusive environment. No wonder she left and disappeared for 20 years.

HollaHolla · 05/01/2019 16:44

I had a boyfriend in my early 20s, who was one of 6 kids, aged from 8 - 22, who all lived at home. The family lived in a 4 bedroom house, so his sisters shared 2 rooms, and he had his own room, as the only boy.
However, downstairs, they had a small ‘snug’ type room, in addition to the living room. The living room was kept as the ‘good room’, and locked at all times, except on a Sunday. It was a big room, and entirely more suitable for a family of 8 to sit, but instead they all packed into the snug, which only had seating for 4 (they sat on the floor) and watched a portable tv, leaving the big ‘good room’ pristine.
I always felt it was a bit weird.

ChesterGreySideboard · 05/01/2019 16:45

That reminds me of a friend when I was at school who used to burn her used sanitary towels in the back garden.

ChesterGreySideboard · 05/01/2019 16:48

Oh, my houses has locks on all the internal doors. I’ve only got the keys for the living room and bathrooms though.
I did used to lock the living room door when we went away with the idea of slowing down a burglar.

LadyRochfordsHoickedGusset · 05/01/2019 16:55

I think keeping a room like that for best, dates back to the Victorian parlour. It was a cultural habit for quite a while, fairly dying out now though!

grimsdyke.com/victorian-parlour/

MakeMyBrownEyesBlue · 05/01/2019 16:57

Years ago I had a friend, and whenever I went round there, there seemed to be soiled sanitary towels everywhere. On her floor, on the bed, in the bathroom. She didn't seem fazed at all.

Clionba · 05/01/2019 17:03

I don't have a bin in the bathroom! I just don't like them.
Just take the items to a bedroom bin, or the kitchen one. Maybe someone is writing on here to complain about my weird house! Grin

abacucat · 05/01/2019 17:11

I would never put a used sanitary towel in a bedroom or kitchen bin.

ChesterGreySideboard · 05/01/2019 17:12

Don’t ever say on here that you don’t have a bathroom bin. It’s like admitting you punch puppies or something.

Donkdonkgoo · 05/01/2019 17:17

Clionba..... I do the same so kitchen bin.... far more hygienic as it gets emptied everyday where as bathroom or bedroom bin doesn't.

Chester grey...... that comment made me laugh 😂

Clionba · 05/01/2019 17:17

Ha ha 😂 😂 😂!!
I'll prepare myself for the onslaught!
Personal preference, just another thing to empty and clean.

arranbubonicplague · 05/01/2019 17:19

Don’t ever say on here that you don’t have a bathroom bin.

Mentally, that played out for me as a Basil Fawlty, "Don't mention the war!" scene. Grin

Clionba · 05/01/2019 17:19

Donkdonkgoo you're my kind of person!
Also washed inside and out on the patio (the kitchen bin, not me!! 😂)