My mum has thrown away over £150 worth of makeup and medication

[nostyleandnoclothes]

I have a small pouch that I carry around with me everyday. It’s got a lot of medication in it (antihistamines, painkillers, stomach medicine), as well as 5 lip sticks and 4 lip liners. In total it comes to over £150 worth of stuff in a space NK small pounce (which is expensive in itself!).

I was at my mum’s on Thursday night when she complained about her having bad hay fever. I pulled out the pouch and handed it to her, and although I thought I’d put it back in my bag I must’ve left it on the side. I realised tonight it’s missing as I’ve gone through my bag ahead of work tomorrow and she’s admitted that she has thrown it away.

AIBU to say she should replace it? Both the makeup and medication she’s thrown away?

Why should she? Make her mum do it. She was the one chucking stuff out that didn't belong to her 🤬

And then, every time you're applying lipstick to help you feel confident that you're looking your best, you can just close your eyes and luxuriate in the arcadian thought of all of that manky chicken goo and liquefied potato peelings being smeared into your face and enhancing how you personally present yourself to the world.........

I'm a bit perplexed at the number of posts which are hostile to the OP. 😕 Why so unsympathetic when she is the victim of her mother's behaviour? I don't get it.

Quite! Anyone saying they’d be ok with this is either lying, stupid, or at best careless about their own heath 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢

It's not Fun House with Pat Sharp - a bin bag full of nasty, rotting food waste and other manky slops can't easily be ripped open and tipped everywhere to look through. You have to carefully and slowly comb through the slime with your fingers, trying not to retch at every stage.

I agree! Of course the bin bags won’t have been pleasant in this heat but I think youve led a very sheltered life if that’s your most disgusting experience so far. I find it very hard thst it took you two hours to go through the rubbish thst had accumulated since the bin was emptied on Thursday unless there are about 10 people in your parents’ house. Im not surprised that the pouch has gone manky, but any medication that is in its foil packaging can be sprayed with disinfectant and washed, as can the lipsticks. I think the OP might be a bit prone to exaggerating 😆😆

Strange post 🙄

My grandmother is the same, and has always been so. I knew her in her 40s when she wasn't elderly.
When my mother got married she came back after her honeymoon and asked the whereabouts of her reading glasses, the novel she was in the middle of reading and her heated rollers. "I threw them out." Said Nana. "I thought you didn't want them."
My heart would just sink if I ever realised I'd absent-mindedly left something at her house. You'd ring her up and she'd be doing this guilty/amused voice. She'd either blatantly say "Oh it's gone in the bin." Or she'd say "Er, yeaah, I'll just get it." and I'd say "Is it in the bin, covered in dinner??" and she'd just laugh. She just wanted everything gone and dealt with. No thought for its value or worth.

I’ve not got children.

I think cleaning up my food poisoning vomit in my second year of uni might be a close second but this was vile. They had a BBQ on Friday and the bin was full of all the food waste from that - lots of meat, a thing of chicken that had been left to sit on the side, cream etc. it was vile.

Omg OP I feel sick just reading that. Well done for trying. I think I’d have emptied it all over her kitchen floor and seen how funny she thought it was then.

Get your parents to pay OP. They clearly have the funds to waste money on themselves so they can compensate you for your mum’s inability to differentiate between rubbish and her daughter’s personal belongings.

If they are as feckless and wasteful as OP describes, they are probably the sort who throw out perfectly good leftover food, rather than saving it for another day, spend hundreds a month on tat from Amazon, throw anything out that shows any hint of being not brand new... They both sound awful.

That's MN for you. I agree - some people just like to be cantankerous.

I think you were both equally careless tbh. You forgot to take it home, she accidentally threw it away with rubbish (I could see myself doing either of these things quite easily, but I'm quite scatty in general).

If you want it back just go get it. Most is probably fine. It won't be the most pleasant thing in the world but you can't expect your mum to pay out over £100 because you're not willing to put your hands in a bin.

Read the update.

Because we must all be perfect and never forget anything, ever! Never mind that I’ve been working in a heatwave for weeks in a hot office, I can’t ever forget anything!

The mum shouldn't have expected OP to put her hands in the bin - the mother should've been the one doing that when it was HER mistake. And OP's "mistake" and her mothers are not in any way equal. You don't just chuck someone else's belongings in the bin, wtaf?! If you find something in your house while tidying that you don't recognise, the normal response is to see what it is, not just bin it.

This does sound odd. Whatever the reason I don't feel you should ask her to pay for it. You can quickly replace the medication I imagine then as to the rest of the items, what a waste but not a catastrophe. I would be concerned as to why she didn't notice she was throwing a bag away without checking contents.

OP, very annoying of her.
I wouldn't be impressed at all.
Her dismissiveness of this would piss me off further.

Throwing out other peoples things is moronic.
You cannot force her to replace it.

Give her a fine wide berth.
If I did that to my daughters things I would 100% apologise and replace.

Because I respect her and other peoples property.

I also value our relationship.
I think your mother is a bit of an arsehole.

Sorry!

If she finds it a big joke, OP, that's unacceptable.

Send her AND your dad - he can see the notifications on his Apple watch & she on her new insurance phone- the links to a replacement pouch, lipsticks & liners. A one line explanation that these need replaced & you don't have the funds readily available to buy all at once.

They sound like total arseholes.

I think, to save £150 I'd manage tbh. I suppose people on this thread are better off if they would be happy to lose that amount. I don't think we're scraping by financially, but I'd definitely be cleaning items in this situation.

It does all seem a little dramatic - I'm not sure it can have taken 2 hours to look through a bin, nor am I sure I believe every item can be ruined.

@Blondeshavemorefun
You obv don’t have kids if a few min in a bin is the most disgusting exp of your life

I have children. I am currently still very much in the bum-wiping stage.

I also once accidentally unplugged my freezer before going on a 2-week holiday in July, when it was full of uncooked meat from the butchers (so not hermetically sealed) and the stench of decomposing flesh is something else altogether. I wore a scarf wrapped round my face while cleaning it up, and had to keep running outside for a breather every 2 minutes. It took me days just to get the memory of the stench out of my nostrils. Poo and sick aren't a patch on rotting meat. (And given how feckless OP's parents are, I would happily bet my last £200 that they had raw meat in the bin, because minimising food waste is for plebs.)

I’d be demanding my very well off and clearly very careless parents replaced the £150 of items.

(OP has said her parents are wealthy. Mine aren’t, nor am I, just to be clear!)

Because you were careless too leaving it there!

I made an innocent mistake. I left a small item at their house. I didn’t throw it in the bin!