To ask for another annoying things about other peoples homes thread?

[balihai550]

This one two years ago made my christmas... can we have another? 🎄 🙏

The locks on our bathroom and downstairs loo don't work so the rule is, if the door is fully closed then don't barge in. Works for all of us here (5 of us during lockdown including 3 largish DCs)

Cushions on leather sofas.

@ChonkyLamp

Stuff which broke YEARS ago and nobody has ever bothered to fix it.

Yes, sorry, that door doesn't open properly, you need to heave it upwards and to the left and then wiggle through the gap. No, the dishwasher doesn't work, we use it for storing jam in. I know it's a pedal bin, but the pedal's broken, so just lift up the lid with your hand every time. No, that window doesn't close (WTF?!). The ceiling lightbulb has gone, but if you walk across the room in the dark and trip over the hostess trolley then you'll find a table lamp on your left which will give you a mild electric shock. The toilet DOES flush, you just have to pump the lever up and down eight times, take the lid off the cistern, twiddle the blue thing, stand on one leg and whistle "Auld Lang Syne" first.

Meanwhile the garden is pristine, with a green velvet lawn and a hedge that's cut with a set square.

GET A FUCKING HANDYMAN IN

MIL has her bedside radio blasting all night. With her bedroom door wide open. Even before FIL died they had Radio 5 bellowing out at all hours. Now, it's company for her.
Years ago in the middle of the night I asked DH if he could go and close her bedroom door but he wouldn't. 😩

What is it with people who don't have a bin in the kitchen? Or at least if they do, it is hidden away in such an unlikely and inaccessible corner that you have to ask where the heck it is.

They are usually the same people who don't have a towel in the downstairs loo, and you have washed your hands before you realise.

Dirty houses

Floors which need a good hovering especially. Makes me feel unwell.

Thankfully everyone in my life now has decent standards of cleanliness

Mum's house. Where she has a HUGE kitchen with loads of counter tops (that I could only dream of!) but nowhere to put anything down because there's stuff piled two feet high all over it. Notebooks, horse head collars, old plates sets from the 1970's (not in use, just left in a pile a dozen plates high), chargers, tools, multimeters, old keys, speakers and other random shite. The whole house is cluttered waist high in some areas. The two bedrooms full of clothes that no one wears. Ever. Piles and piles of them, fully covering two single beds, two bedding boxes, two big wardrobes and 6 under bed boxes. In front of all the beds and wardrobes are more piles of clothes meaning you can't actually access the wardrobes.

Just... WHY?!?!?

@theconstantinoplegardener

Another vote for no bathroom bin.

And air fresheners all over the place. They make me heave.

They make me cough my guts up.

If it's lovelier than mine then it really annoys me because I'm a jealous cow.

If mine is nicer than theirs then that annoys me because I then feel like a smug cow.

@JauntyMcGinty

Cushions on leather sofas.

Don't you still need some support? We aren't all 20.

My issues are more home deco based, I can't bear letters which state HOME / FAMILY etc, they drive me nuts. Loads of photos of eveyone everywhere a bit weird too.
Actually, on the toilet front, I do think people should have toilet brushes 'available' in case you feel the need to have a little tidy up. It's only polite.

My IL have no kitchen bin. At all. They have a tiny filthy white bucket which sits on the side and is for peels and teabags. I’ve never ever known where all recycling and other rubbish goes. Once I opened a packet of biscuits I’d brought and just put the packet in my pocket and took it home.

I used to babysit for a friend who didn't have curtains or lamps. You either sat in the pitch dark or glaring bright. It was so unrelaxing.

Spare room is dumping ground for massive, ugly inherited furniture that is so big you have to sidle into the room and into bed, where the only plug socket for your charger is trapped behind a huge piece of furniture. The bed is a double with a queen-sized 1 tog duvet, the pillows could double as pitta breads.

No mirrors, no flat surfaces to put anything on, no bin except in the kitchen, you have to place towels and clothes on the floor of the shower room that hasn’t been plastered while you balance your toothbrush on a basin with no flat edges and straddle the toilet to do your make up next to the cream for piles.

I fucking hate staying there. Covid has at least given me a year off

Our bookcase is in the spare room along with a load of odds and ends so you wouldn't see it! (Our bedroom has a weird layout)

Can't stand:
Not knowing where the bin is/complicated bin or recycling system
Loads of grody old towels in the bathroom and you don't know which to dry your hands on after washing them
TOILETS THAT DON'T FLUSH PROPERLY and lack of bin in bathroom.
Dusty knicknacks/mail/catalogues/"ironing pile" everywhere so you can't even put a glass of water down anywhere and just have to hold it.
Nowhere to charge your phone if you're staying overnight (I bring an extension cord to in-laws when I stay)
Clocks outside bedroom that TICK TOCK BONGGGG aggressively loudly.
Flat screen TVs attached high up on the wall
(Don't get me started on parents' TV settings..... 'motion smoothing' etc...!)
Dining chairs that scrape really noisily on the floor, like nails down a blackboard, especially when trying to get a baby to sleep directly above.

I’ve never had a bathroom bin as I don’t wear makeup and everything else I just take down to the kitchen or straight outside.

I’m always very conscious of my bathroom as it has no window and can smell a bit musty sometimes but luckily the toilet is separate and has a window.

The only things I can think of is a friend of mine had a toilet full of cigarette butts. I also can’t stand grey houses it feels so depressing like you’re in a Tim burton movie.

When someone tells you to help yourself from the fridge, you open it and there are slimy things half wrapped in recycled bits of tin foil oozing slowly on a shelf and 14 half used jars of mustard with encrusted orange bits around the bottom of the lid, oh and a smear of something jelly like on the outside of the carton holder shelf thingy in the door.

And uncomfortable too small guest beds

Houses where the heating goes off at night in the winter and you have one small thin blanket so you have to get up and get dressed in the middle of the night and go back to bed with your coat draped over you trying to think warm thoughts

Houses where its so echoy that you get a headache from just chatting with the host

Houses where you arent sure which is the front door and which is the side/back door and you spend 5 mins in a social quandary trying to decide where to knock. You then guess wrong and the host takes ages to answer the door before saying brightly “oh we never use this door, you should come to x door, that what we always use”. Well make it more obvious ffs, like put a light on at that door and not the other one.

I spend my time there boiling and side-eyeing things in jars.
😂😂

@theviewfromhalfwaydown

I’ve never had a bathroom bin as I don’t wear makeup and everything else I just take down to the kitchen or straight outside.

I’m always very conscious of my bathroom as it has no window and can smell a bit musty sometimes but luckily the toilet is separate and has a window.

The only things I can think of is a friend of mine had a toilet full of cigarette butts. I also can’t stand grey houses it feels so depressing like you’re in a Tim burton movie.

Youmight not wear make up but do you not have periods or floss your teeth?

Just like @olderthanyouthink I don't use any of the things you mention in the bathroom, and nor did my family.
Toiletries unpackaged inthe kitchen before being taken to the bathroom, hair brushing in the bedroom, where I do have a bin. I start using the interdental brush in the bathroom but walk through to the bedroom as I do so, and throw it away there.

Toilet bins are a necessity. You may have zero qualms about carrying your used sanitary pad to god knows where but spare a thought for your guests.

My sis in law has no toilet or kitchen bin. One fine day, I found myself scurrying from the toilet to the outside bin. ‘Oh, where is she going?’ They all queried. Because why would your guest leave the toilet with a wad of pad/loo roll rammed in her fist, cross the living room, enter the kitchen, fidget with the locked door to escape to the driveway to bin her used pad?

Get a toilet bin. If not for you, for your guests. Excuses of ‘I don’t have a period and I don’t need one’ says you don’t need to have guests either.

I thought this thread was going to be funny, but it's mostly quite judgey, even snobby. .

What do people do if they're on their period and the bathroom in the house they're visiting doesn't have a bin? I really hated having to deal with that when I was young and vowed never to put anyone in that position.

Giant kitchen bins with a missing lid. Always full up.

Huge studio portrait photos of the kids. The real things are right here sitting next to you. Why do you need portraits too?

One of my relatives has a bathroom that's like stepping into a 1980s student house bathroom. It's freezing and damp and has a weird strip of ancient damp, dirty carpet by the shower. Tons of toiletries/medical stuff everywhere. Big greyish wet towels to "dry" your hands with. Put some fresh towels out for your guests! You're in your 50s fgs!!

We went to their place one summer on the hottest day of the year. Sat in a boiling living room for hours with a tiny cheap fan for all 10 of us. The thing is the room has a huge sliding door window overlooking the nice garden. Why not open it to let the natural air in? Hell even sit outside!

@olderthanyouthink

Some of you would love our bathroom and en-suites that have no windows at all. Extractor fans only run with the lights on too.

We don't have a bathroom bin we moved here when I was pregnant and I've had one period in 3 year and I use a cup. Other than pregnancy tests whats to throw away? Will get a bin for guests (that will go unused for months at a time)

You see, I dont understand how some people dont need a bathroom bin.

What do you do with:

• empty toiletry bottles
• used cotton buds
• used make up remover pads
• used dental floss / Ti-Pis
• used tissues
• empty loo rolls
• nail clippings

My own annoyances in other peoples houses are:

cheap tea bags / coffee / UHT milk
glaring overhead lights
no lamps or candles
no attempt at interior design
vertical blinds (remind me of offices)