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

[purpleworms]

...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 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!

@MishMoshMash - your parents weren't meditators by any chance were they? Our house had similar bed time fascism!

Aw MitziK!!!

To everyone who's said something lovely to me - thank you. I wasn't posting for sympathy, but it was the weirdest thing in my life as a child to realise that people didn't live as we did.

Whenever you see articles about Hoarders, it's always about how sad and lonely and traumatised they are - not about how their preference for Stuff and Muck and Filth compared to the needs of their children and families has affected - hurt - others.

If you know of a kid who isn't quite 'clean', their parent won't allow them to have friends round, doesn't have a birthday party, this could be why. Please try and give them a chance to see normality if you can.

xxx

My parents haven't opened any of the curtains in their house since I can remember. It took me ages to get into the habit of actually opening my curtains when I moved out.

We also had a curtain round the front door and only ever entered or left the house through the side gate. Never answered the front door and had to walk past our front gate and look round the car park next door and check no one was waiting there before going in. Found out as an adult it was because of bailiffs but as a teenager I can remember being really confused none of my friends had to do that.

Sad otter...My mum always said folk that leave curtains closed were dodgy and trying to hide something 😳

Donk Or someone's died.

When I was about 14 I stayed with an aunt, uncle and their daughter who is a year older than me for a few days.
They were/are very religious.
On the side board in the dining room was a huge bible that just before sitting at the table for their meal, every one would place their hand on it together and do a silent prayer, followed by Grace once we had actually got seated. The meals were eaten in absolute silence.
I remember on the Sunday afternoon after a morning session in the church and lunch, we had to sit in silence as my aunt and cousin sewed and my uncle read his bible, before traipsing back to church for the evening session.
The room we sat in during that afternoon was like a shrine to all things religious. I'm just surprise that there wasn't a bloody pulpit in the corner of it where my uncle could shout about hellfire and brimstone.
I wasn't in the least bit surprised to hear that my cousin had become a nun!
That was my one and only torturous visit.

@MitziK, my friend I've mentioned further up the threads father is a 'mild' hoarder. It was sad and eye opening for me to see. His dad, sister and himself are autistic, but his dad and sister have OCD that manifests as hoarding. Once I got back from his house I completely gutted my room and I'm in the process of selling/donating and binning a load of stuff. Just because I can see how easily it happens and don't want to go down that road.

I went to a friend's house who had fox skins including the head everywhere and their pet cat stuffed on a plaque. I was too scared to ever go there again.

People always thought I was weird as I shared a room with my sister until I was 20 and we never saw each other getting changed and always knocked before entering the room.

My next door neighbour is an intense hoarder and the reason I know this is ,ironically, she has her curtains wide open 24-7 for all to see the teetering piles and piles of stuff. I mean I don't how you could navigate yourself through it. Front garden is similar.

She is friendly and a nice woman. Maybe she's happy with the way she lives?

@coralnails my ‘d’f is also v racist and we were not allowed to eat Italian good at home. Imagine my delight at sleepovers when we had tinned spaghetti. Lots of things from my childhood were pretty tragic, but what was enlightening was my best friend at the time dad had an affair with the next door neighbour. Her mum wouldn’t leave him and it caused the kids a lot of pain. I told my friend why is she’d nice to her Dad when he was such s prickvto her Mum. She answered, because she loved her Daf. That was my mind blown. People actually loved their Dad, not all Dads were cunts.

To another op who commented on ASD / ocd and hoarders. This is my 10yo dd. She is a hoarder with ASSd, they haven’t officially diagnosed OCD yet, as she doesn’t state a fear as to why she hoards stuff. There is no order to her hoarding. We have had cahms involvement but basically they say they can’t help her as it’s her autism. It’s so upsetting to me as I grew up in s filthy house and I just see it perpetuating. It plays on my MH, which can be pretty precarious anyway (explained by my childhood). At times it can all be very overwhelming.

Front garden? Good lord, I couldn't live next door to that. I hope you rent and don't own. That would be my worst nightmare. I used to walk past the house of a hoarder in an otherwise really beautiful and expensive street. The garden was like a breakers yard and you could hardly get to the front door. I felt so sorry for their next door neighbours. If they needed to sell they'd have no chance. The only saving grace was that the trees and hedges were so overgrown they did at least screen things a bit.

My mum puts a flat sheet under a duvet

Apparently lots of people do this. Why? I suppose it's so you don't have to wash a quilt cover all the time, but just the sheet. But a quilt cover is only double a sheet so I couldn't be arsed. Plus I toss and turn and it would be a nightmare making the bed in the morning!

When I bought my first property, it was a newly converted flat in a 4 floor victorian house. It was the first one to be converted out the 4. The one below me.. oh my god a hippy family renting with two little children. They kept birds. Not in cages, just flying around the house. There was bird shit literally everywhere.... walls, sofas, furniture, tables. I've never seen so many birds flying around. And it absolutely stunk in there, so much so you could hardly catch your breath. I saw the bathroom and wished I hadnt, there was shit smeared all up the walls

They eventually moved, and the owner was stripping it out. I got off the bus one day and was walking home and could smell this incredibly toxic choking smell, so could everyone. It was the bonfire and shitty cupboards that the owner was burning in the garden.

I have a dc who is a naked pooper. I had always put it down to his autism.

I agree about the sheet. It seems like a monumental faff to me, for very little benefit. Unless you sleep like a stone statue and the bedding doesn't move, surely it's a waste of time.

My first rental in the 80s was the upstairs half of a pretty ordinary early 20th century semi. Widowed owner lived downstairs. Story was that their daughter had found it hard to find a home when newly married about 20 years before so her parents had converted the upstairs into a totally separate flat with its own kitchen, front door etc. 20 years later she had moved on and widowed mother was left with having random strangers renting upstairs which she found quite a strain as she got older. (She also liked to have a snoop round when I was out at work). I still pass by occasionally and it's been converted back to a normal semi.

I also once had a boyfriend whose father was also waited on hand and foot by his mother. His father would spend Saturday afternoons glued to the horse racing on TV and his wife had to be on hand to run out periodically to the telephone in the hallway to ring the bookies with his bets.

I was on a playdate at a friend's house when we were like 8 and they offered me some toast with jam. I put on the jam and my friend gave me an evil stare and asked why I put on sooo much. I just looked at her confused. I hadn't even put on so it reached all the edges. Then she put on her most saintlike expression and put jam on her own piece of toast and she put on so little that it hardly even got pink. Until I commented that there was no point of putting jam on toast if you put on so little that you couldn't even taste it, I don't think it ever occurred to her that it might be a bit weird.

I had a couple of friends when I was little, where their parents would cheerfully invite you to join them for lunch or dinner, but then it would become very obvious that they had not actually meant it, as they would begrudge every bite I took. I mentioned it to some of the other students, when I was at uni and one of the other students stated that "But everybody knows that you don't mean it when you invite people over for dinner and it is just rude to accept the invitation and stay". She thought that all the others would agree with her. They didn't. We all thougth that it was very rude, as you can just refrain from inviting people over and several people told her that they only invited people to dinner if they actually meant it and so did their parents.

@raven88 we have a second sitting room the dog and DC’s are banned from! We have a ‘snug’ for the kids and dog and the sitting room just for us and adult visitors is heaven. It’s all cream and luxury and has no toys in there. It’s amazing to relax in our own adult space once the boys are in bed.

Two flats I have viewwd had showers in the bedroom surrounded by carpet. It's just so odd. The first one I could understand as the flat was tiny and space was a premium but the second flat was massive and had two bathrooms already. (great flat, would have bought it only it was above commercial shops and the mortgage lenders were picky about it.)
My friends found it odd that if I wanted to eat anything I had to ask my mums permission first. I thought it was just polite haha
I also had to run any decision I made by her first. I'm one of four and we all did it.
I still run things by her now. It was only my DH telling me I was capable of doing tunings without asking for permission when I realised it might be a strange thing to do.

I had a friend who used to ring her mum from her bedroom to bring her up lollypops. Yeah.

I was about 10 when a friend had me and a couple of other girls over. Her mum gave us a lovely picnic on the sitting room floor including crisps and doughnuts and other unhealthy things. We loved it. Half way through though she hurriedly cleared up and put a plate of rice and lentils in from of each of us and told us not to mention any of the other food as the father let himself into the house. He marched up to us to check what we were eating and quizzed me on the food. I fear I thought it was a game and most likely got them all into trouble by not being a very good liar. Looking back it was incredibly sad.

I also clearly recall the first time I saw parents and children kiss on each others lips, I did not manage to hide my shock at all. I have no idea it was a thing for some families.

Oh I am remembering loads. Another friend had one sleeping room with 5 single beds pushed against eachother where the whole family slept. The spare rooms in the house were not used, as in they were just empty, nothing in them.

Oh and another, one family I knew as a child didn't use toilet paper but instead had a small towel each. Then one for guests....shudder.

Our first house in England had sinks in all the bedrooms. The second had a shower cubicle in the corner of the second bedroom.