Bogie Wall!

[TottenhamGirl]

Due to unforeseen circumstances, my sister and two teenage nieces (13 & 14) came to stay with me this summer in my pretty small flat. I truly love them and in the main enjoyed spending time with them immensely, but as a childless person who lives alone, I found the mess my nieces created pretty mind boggling. Cleanliness is important to me and the trashing of my flat made me anxious, a bit depressed and sometimes angry. This is compounded by the fact that we all shared a place together some years ago and my sister and I used to get into horrid arguments on this very subject.

I went to stay with my family for a few days recently and was sharing my older niece’s room. While we were making the bed she said, Sorry the chest of drawers on your side is so dirty and explained that her younger sister rubs bogies on it! I said, Oh! 😟 and thought, How gross, hoped she was mistaken and tried not to look at it for the remainder of my stay.

This morning I decided to do one of those 6 monthly jobs and clean under my spare bed. I pulled the bed out and was sweeping when I noticed some marks on the wall next to the bed. I tried to remove them with a damp cloth, but they were stubborn. I wondered what they could be and then realised that there were loads of them. Not that I stopped to count, but I estimate between 50 and 100 - so I spent the next 45 minutes scrubbing 6 weeks worth of the contents of my niece’s nose off my wall! 🤢🤢🤮🤮 It completely ruined my day. I’m so upset that I needed to spend any portion of my life on such a disgusting task. I was speaking to my older niece on the phone this afternoon about something else and mentioned it to her. She said that she’s not sure if the younger one is even aware that she does it.

My sister and nieces are due to come to stay again in a few weeks and I really want to enjoy the time with them, but I would like for them to treat my home more respectfully. I’m not sure how to broach this with my sister. I feel that she resents it if I mention these problems and quickly shuts me down. Understandably she’s protective of her children. Am I being unreasonable to expect her to point out to my niece that I had to suffer the consequences of her actions and ask her to be more self aware while she’s staying with me?

That's absolutely disgusting and not normal.

A four year old might do it once or twice but a 13/14 year old deliberately wiping the contents of her nose on the wall is her showing her utter contempt for you.

You tell your sister what you found and you tell her it will not be happening again.

You check the girls room every day and if you find one, you frog March her into the room so she can clean it off in front of you.

If your sister doesn't like it, tough! She should have raised her child to have better hygiene standards and go respect other peoples property.

You are definitely NOT BU! Who would want to have to do that, it's disgusting! I think you need to tell your DS the way that you feel. It may result in a falling out, but if their visits cause you such a lot of extra AND disgusting work, not to mention making you stressed and angry, it's really not worth them coming, or at least not in my opinion. If you can't bring yourself to talk to her about it, either by phone or face to face, then I'd be inclined to either email, or even send a proper letter by snail mail, so that she really has a chance to think about what you've said, before she reacts, as often things are said on the spur of the moment due to embarrassment, etc., whereas if she has a chance for your words to sink in, she may realise that you aren't being unfair, but merely telling her how you feel and setting boundaries as to what is, and what isn't acceptable when they visit your home. Good luck, I hope you're able to reach an understanding with your DS and her family.

I think it's not only completely gross but very odd behaviour. She is old enough to know this. Personally I would be telling her "I DO NOT expect to be cleaning off your bogies!" and it really would not bother me to do it in front of her mother and sister. If your sister gets offended she is not being a good mum and is very much misplacing her anger.