To think MIL should replace DD's hair products?

[comeandhaveteawithme]

MIL recently took DD away on Holiday, for which I am of course very grateful.

I packed her a hand luggage backpack and a small suitcase. I obviously put any liquids over 150ml in her suitcase, which I was told would be checked into the hold.

Once at the airport, they decided DD's suitcase was small enough to go on as hand luggage so they didn't bother checking it in.

Subsequently, all of DD's hair products were confiscated and thrown away. She has long, thick hair that can be difficult to manage so I buy her certain products that we've tried and tested that work on her hair, the products total about £20. Also confiscated was a bottle of sun cream that costs £7.

We don't have a lot of spare money, and still have four weeks of the Summer Holidays left to go and need any spare cash we have. I can't really spend an extra £27 replacing these products that were almost full when I packed them and have now just been chucked in the bin. My Summer Holiday plans and budget are very carefully calculated. £27 is lunches for the week.

It is reasonable to think MIL should have bought her new stuff? I'm not going to ask her, but should she have replaced them? or AIBU and should just suck it up because she took her away and treated her?
DH just thinks it's all my fault and seems to think it somewhat amusing that I "still don't know liquid rules at airports" 🙄

How is it OPs fault? She was told the suitcase would be checked in luggage . You can have full size products in your hold luggage!

Not holidays. Just days out. That they offered to do.

That you were quite happy to accept, from the amount of stuff you say they lost it must have been a regular thing yet you still let her go

Yabu , yes it's annoying but you would of saved that money not having her for the week in the holidays and not paying any entertainment costs , food etc. How fabulous she has grandparents that invest time and money and clearly love in her and you're griping that they overlooked the liquid allowence. Frankly even if they offered 99 percent of people would say hell no after you did all that and give her that wonderful family experience but hey ho, I'm just so glad you not actually asking for the money because that would be insane , again yes yabu.

Can’t you read??? She said she was told that small case would go into the hold luggage and so therefore packed the liquids in that. The MIL was at fault for changing the plan!

Hi OP, I am the one who said "it drives me nuts" about my nieces and this whole thread is a good argument for why it is silly not to decant - as many people have agreed with. Of course I let them do their own stuff, getting irked doesn't mean I am angry or say anything.

Carrying 450ml of thick liquid back and fro when you absolutely will not need more than maybe 50 ml is like carrying a kilo of salt for your holiday when it is inconceivable that you may need it.

Sure you can put it in luggage and on the face of it won't cost anything - but at some point someone will have to haul it - either up some stairs, or into cars and vans... and why? If it were a spare pair of shoes, or a hair drier, whatever it would be okay as some possibility it might be used - but 500ml of shampoo or whatever for a 5 day trip?

Not my nieces but I want traveling with friends twice recently and both times there was no life to the hotel room - and someone had to carry over-packed suitcases up stairs. Not the friends, but the male partners.

You've lost £27 worth of products. When I leave a decanted bottle of shampoo behind in the hotel bathroom, I lose pennies.

I don't really understand how this happened- when you book a flight (or a package holiday) you book your hold luggage at the same time- if you turned up at the airport and didn't check you would still have paid for it-you don't get a refund. If it was your MIL who booked the holiday and she is the one who decided not to have any checked luggage then she should have told you, and you have the discussion about hair products before the holiday, if she didn't tell you then I would expect her to refund for the discarded products.
Also I assume your DD is teenage or less, in which case if you are on a budget and her hair type and style requires £20 of hair products for a week she, needs a different hairstyle because that is not a sustainable, or a reasonable ongoing cost.

The MIL was at fault for changing the plan!

But going down that route she changed the plan so as not to upset her GD.
She also of course lost money if she had paid for the luggage to go in the hold.

Perhaps the lessons here are decant stuff & use old suit cases!

I would ask if they wouldn’t mind helping her with replacements as 1) she is currently on holiday and needs shampoo etc, and 2) you hasn’t budgeted for this and funds are tight due to the summer. As long as you are nice about it they shouldn’t mind. And it’s better to ask than go without lunch got a week! Sending you my best wishes xxx

Sorry, the only one who comes off bad in all this is your dick of a husband!

while I am extremely grateful

For some reason, you are not coming across grateful, Op.

If £27 was lunches for the week and you can’t afford to replace the items and be comfortable I would say you probably couldn’t afford to take your daughter on holiday so her grandma did so she didn’t miss out.
I see your annoyance but she didn’t have to take her and she didn’t choose for you to be so broke you couldn’t replace some hair products without despair.
I’d say be grateful your daughter experienced a holiday that you were not able to afford.

I agree the products should have been decanted. You’ve packed for a 9 yo girl for 5 days who was going to be expected to handle somewhat her own luggage as Gran would have had hers as well, it is an unnecessary extra weight.

Secondly you’ve taken the risk that the original bottle/products wouldn’t have leaked. I’m not long back from Asia and both my Sebastian shampoo and roll top deodorant leaked in my bathroom bag. It’s not the first time either I’ve had leaks and I pack those types of items in large gallon size ziplocks so the products don’t go through my bag should the worst happen. The conditioner in a similar bottle was fine. I lost a considerable amount of the shampoo which wasnt full and was for a 15 day trip.

in summary I think it’s lesson learned all round. By all means let know MIL of her grand daughter’s difficult hair and how you like to style/control it. Perhaps alternative holiday styles are worth exploring too, and the hair product saved for special occasions if the budget is already right.?

I’m pretty sure your daughter can survive without expensive products for the rest of the school holidays .. it’s pretty petty to be thinking the MIL should have to cough up for expensive products to be honest . Just get some ordinary shampoo , people have survived for thousands of years without expensive products sold to put money in business pockets .

These threads are so annoying.

Peopld get pissy that the OP isn't coming back with updates and further information

The OP then comes back with a long and detailed update giving plenty of extra information, and further smaller updates.

People then do not read the updates and still ask the same questions "how old is your daughter" "why didn't you XYZ' "Did you discuss XYZ with your MIL?" and still calling it shampoo.

And still people making comments that make it very clear they didn't even read the OP, never mind the updates.

No wonder OP hasn't been back since last night. She's probably thinking there's really no point in updating anyone. And she's right.

I think people are questioning op because of rant against Mil, who only chose to take her dd’s bag in the cabin because dd didn’t want to let go of bag. MiL does not deserve OP’s anger. Perhaps she didn’t know how expensive the products are and thought she could use her own hair shampoo and conditioner.

Now she will have to ask her mum or mother in law to lend her some money to buy the products as they are essential for dd’s hair or get some cheaper substitute.

It's not shampoo

She's not going to go without lunch for a week. She's just going to go without the products, because replacing them costs the same as a week's worth of lunches.
No sane person is going without lunch because they lost hair products. OP has explained this, has said she only mentioned lunch to compare cost and highlight how expensive the products are to her, by comparing them with another expense in her budget.
The amount of people on here who genuinely think OP is starving her children for the sake of hair styling products is actually insane.

It seems like 70% of people on mumsnet don't read anything and the 30% that do can't comprehend what they are reading.

OH MY GOD ITS NOT SHAMPOO!!

M-I-L paid to take your DD away, I presume you expected her to pay for any hold luggage as well? It's a bit cheeky of you to expect M-I-L to fork out (what is usually @£50 each way) to put your daughter's suitcase in the hold because the liquid allowance was over what is allowed as hand luggage. YABU.

To be honest it wouldn’t occur to me to get styling products for a 9 year old. I’d obviously buy some shampoo and toothpaste, but I wouldn’t have registered the nature of the items thrown away.

I would have bought sunscreen though and passed it on to the parents

If you had read the OP (because it’s literally the third line - you didn’t even need to read any of OP’s updates), you wouldn’t have had to presume anything. OP was told explicitly that her DD’s case would be checked into the hold, which is why she packed her hair products in that case.

The case ended up being taken as carry-on instead, and so the products were all binned at security.

The OP has explained that the MIL DID pay to check in the bag. She said she even saw the paperwork.

Yanbu. My parents would have offered to pay and rightly so. You've done nothing wrong at all.

UPDATE: MIL HAS REPLACED THE HAIR PRODUCTS!!

MIL popped round for coffee today (shitty, own brand instant coffee, don't worry), and we were chatting about the Holiday etc, when the subject of the binned hair products came up.
MIL and DH both found the subject amusing and at one point MIL said "I would have expected YOU to have been a bit more organised, don't you know the rules about liquids at airports" the "you" referring to the fact that I am generally joked about within the family as being very anal and precise about a lot of things, meticulously planning my budgets and my schedule, planning trips down to the minute, saving coupons etc. When they helped us move house they saw my extremely well organised socks drawers and found them hilarious etc etc, and I usually take the ribbing about my "analness" with good humour.
However they seemed to be quite smug and enjoying the fact that I had somehow been caught out and the titters and smug little glances to each other were severely getting on my tits.
So, (and I know I will get flamed as a nasty and ungrateful MIL hater for this next bit) I did pipe up and say "well, you know, you DID say that the suitcase was going in the hold, and it also said so on the itinerary you gave me, so actually that's why I packed full size in her suitcase and not in her backpack" and she just smiled and said "oh yes, well, yes, I suppose we did say that".

Mumsnet, you know I didn't intend to say anything, and I totally wasn't going to but none of you were there, her and my DH sitting there smugly laughing at me was so good damn annoying. The kids had been driving me mad and I was really wound up. I was hot and bothered and had been running around the house like a madwoman getting it in a respectable state for her visit and I just wanted a nice coffee with my MIL (who I do actually like, very much) without being patronised and made to feel stupid and that smile when she admitted that she DID say the back would be checked in, was just a tad too smug and self satisfied for my liking.

And I'll tell you something else, that whole family is chaotic and disorganised as fuck and I really don't mind, I even love them for it, but they know full well that I am the organiser and that they can rely on me to be the one to cook Christmas dinner for a massive crowd of relatives, or be the one that has the wet wipes or the extra water bottle someone needs on a day out. She's not like that, and I think a part of her feels a bit inadequate (she's not, she's perfectly nice and normal) and was enjoying having one up on me a little bit too much.

And I'm sorry, but I'm not a saint and I couldn't let that slide. If I was at fault, I'd have admitted it, and laughed along but you know what mumsnetters? It bloody well wasn't so I went further. I did. I said this next bit and now I feel bad but I said it and that's that.

I said "and actually they weren't cheap products".

I said it as I was going back into the kitchen with the cups so I thought I'd just sort of let that land with her and that the subject would be changed when I got back.

But no, she starts spluttering and saying "oh.. sorry... I didn't realise.... what were they? What products were they? I'll get her some more..." wind taken totally out of her sails

And I immediately felt guilty and the wind was also taken out of my sales and I spluttered back "oh no, please don't worry, it doesn't matter, I was just saying..."

And we just sort of spluttered back and forth awkwardly, me brining up rhe fact that she'd done so much for DD, and her brining up that no, no, it was her fault really, both clearly feeling awkward and guilty while DH, the dick, just sort of sat between us and looked awkwardly back and forth.

But I went to the kitchen, and when I came back, the subject had indeed been changed by DH, who can apparently do something useful, and the rest of the visit passed pleasantly enough, we looked at more photos and chatted about this and that.

And then when leaving she said, "do please let me know what that hairstuff was, I'm off to Tesco now so I can pick them up" and I said "no, no don't worry"

Anyway, she bloody video calls DH while down the hair stuff aisle without my knowledge as I was in the garden, and he tells her he doesn't see them on the shelf (she shops at a different supermarket to us) so she bloody drives over to our usual supermarket and she video calls him again and she gets him to point out the products on the shelf to her and she buys them and brings them over.

Mortified. Absolutely mortified. But it would also be a massive lie to say I am not relieved and pleased to have them replaced. And so are my kids who were bloody starving having not had lunch, which I totally couldn't give them until the products were replaced, apparently.

So there you are people. I hope this has been a satisfying conclusion to this rather mundane tale that I honestly didn't expect to get more than 10 or so replies.

I shall leave you all to debate whether or not I am a MIL-hating entitled brat, speculate about whatever tiny detail I no doubt missed out, and await children's services knocking at my door to collect my lunch-deprived children.

Thank you all for your participation xx

Oh, and PS: I can't decant mousse.

I even googled it to see if you can, in fact, decant mousse, in case I said that and then someone smugly popped up to say yes, you can and it turns out that no, you can't decant aerosol mousse, it just turns to liquidy gel stuff.

One person on google did say that you can actually use the liquidy gel stuff just the same way as you do the mousse but I absolutely 100% do not believe that anyone on here knows that or that any of you would actually attempt to decant mousse, especially when you have been given solid information that suggests you can just take a full bottle.

If anyone says that they would then just know I absolutely 100% know you are lying, you do not do that, don't be so silly.