So last year my partner and I had our first child, our DD. When we were pregnant we were living in a small room in a shared house. My parents offered for us to move home for a few months to save for a bigger place.
When my MIL found out she immediately suggested that we moved in with her for a few months as she had more room than my parents and it was just her and my BIL who was 16 at time. We said no as my partner has told me of the mood swings she has and how she used to behave with him when he was a teenager. He moved out when he was 16 to live with his dad as he couldn't cope with her. She was annoyed and said she wouldn't get time to bond with her grandchild.
We moved to my parents house and had our DD. During this time my sister moved her boyfriend of 2 months into the house and got pregnant.
It was a nightmare for my partner living with them as my sister and her boyfriend were very rude to him constantly telling him what he could and couldn't do, down to the amount of time he was allowed a bath, until they had a falling out and my parents asked him to leave as my sister was pregnant and they didn't want stress for her. This was fair enough in my book as I didn't want anyone to be stressed. MIL immediately offered for us to stay with her.
The first few days were fine as she was happy to have her grandchild there. I made a point to do everything to keep her happy, I cleaned the house every day, did her washing and dried and folded her clothes. She refused rent, so we put electricity on the meter and bought our own food so we weren't being an inconvenience. My partner did any jobs she wanted done around the house and as I was the only one who drove, I drove her wherever she asked without payment or petrol money. She then started asking me to drive my BIL to his girlfriend's house or to collect her twice a week, she would get me to bring him to his sports classes and even had me drive him 2 hours to a game sit and wait for 2 hours and 2 hours home all with a 3 month old baby. She never thanked me and never paid for petrol it all came out of my pocket which was fairly empty at the time.
Things started getting very annoying when MIL and BIL started eating all our food, would leave the washing machine full of dirty clothes so I had to wash them before I could wash our own clothes, MIL told me I needed to hang my washing outside and wasn't allowed to use tumble dryer only she could use as it was too high on electricity (I was buying electricity every week), left the kitchen filthy and would tell me to clean it. MIL put a lock on the freezer so I couldn't access our food without her permission, she took all the towels out of the bathroom and hid them in her bedroom wardrobe because she said she needed them more than us, she insisted that every window in the house be kept open for a few hours each day to air the house which was fine but I would close the blind so that DD didn't get chilly! This infuriated MIL who said the blinds had to be kept open too, I just ignored this as it was only in our bedroom and I didn't consider it a big deal.
After 3 weeks MIL said we needed to find another place to live as she wanted to get a foreign exchange student and needed the room. She suggested we buy a caravan and live in that while we saved money she said it would be more private for us and we could stay a year or more. She said we could put it at the back of her property. We agreed and used our savings to buy a beautiful 1980's vintage caravan and the bits that were needed to renovate it. My partner got to work as quickly as possible to renovate it working all his free time.
After two weeks she was getting increasingly hostile with us, she wouldn't acknowledge DD and would bump into me in the hallway without saying a word. I told my partner we needed to hurry so he stepped up the work on caravan. I bought him a small electric kettle to use outside to have 1-2 cups of tea a day to keep him warm out there and that's when she lost the plot. She came home that day and went to use her gas hob (we never used hob) and the gas was gone she accused us of using all the gas and demanded I bought her a new gas cannister. I told her that I did not use gas hob and she said my partner was making tea. I told her I had bought a kettle and she started screaming at me that there are no kettles to be used in her house as it was to high on electricity. I tried to explain that two cups of tea a day was only a couple of cent a week and she said she didn't care so I said well I paid for the electricity anyway. She lost it then, she pulled out money to the value of the electricity I had put on the meter last and threw it at me (while I was holding DD). She then accused me of not doing her washing ( I hadn't dried her washing for her because she locked the tumble drier in the shed (she had key) and the fields had recently been fertilized and if I hung them up outside they would smell like pig poo! So I opted to wait until she came home and get the key off her. My partner and I decided we would go out for a while to let her calm down but when we came back she was ready for a fight and continued to get up in my face while I had DD and shout at me. Apparently it was her house, she told us not to go there she didn't want us, we never cleaned, expected her to do all the washing (hers and BIL) and she said that because of DD the house smelled (assuming this was because I refused to open blind with windows open). She then told us the next morning we were to get out.
As we had just spent all our money on a vintage caravan and my partner was not welcome at my parents the next day we packed up all our belongings and went to a hotel where we used our last bit of money to stay a few nights. Thankfully my FIL helped us with a deposit and first month's rent and after 1 week in a hotel we found our own apartment. The day we left MIL's house I purposely didn't say anything as I had been respectful the whole time and wanted to leave as I had behaved all along (even though there was a lot I wanted to say), MIL checked our belongings to ensure as she said we weren't stealing her things and locked the shed doors as we left saying we would steal on our way out! The caravan was collected by a lorry transport company and when lifted on the crane it broke at the seams so we lost all that money.
MIL then blocked us on social media as did BIL. Two days later she messaged accusing me of stealing her shovel to which I didn't respond as I had nothing belonging to her. She has not messaged once to ask how her grandchild is and she has gone out of her way to make up a story for the rest of her family who now don't speak to us. And last month she messaged me looking for the receipt for her Christmas present so she could return it. I didn't have the receipt so she asked for my bank statements which I gave her.
I have decided I want nothing more to do with her and don't want her to ever see my DD again. Not that she cares at this point DD has since turned 1 and she hasn't asked us how she is in 7 months now. AIBU?