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?

@emptynestling i second that WOW

It’s one of those things I never even really notice having on me till I don’t!

Yikes - what a careless/thoughtless thing to do.
She definitely needs to replace it all - I’d be mortified if I’d done that to my daughter.
If she doesn’t replace it all I’d put myself up for adoption!! 🤣

Make your mum.go.through HER bin. Just because she's careless and able to replace stuff, doesn't mean you are. Or she owes you for replacements. Might make her think twice in future. She sounds awful 😔

Is her house usually in a mess? Can’t see why she’d scoop up a load of things and bin them at one time otherwise.

Just go and look in the bin see what can be salvaged

All very well, but it wasn't an accident, was it? You can't accidentally throw away a bag that belongs to someone else, it was a choice. She didn't want it cluttering up her room so she threw it away. An accident would be if she dropped it getting out of the car, or left it behind at someone else's house. In fact YOU accidentally left it behind, but it would be reasonable to expect her to look after it if she found it until she next saw you, not chuck it away.
I think she should replace it, she deliberately threw it away. She knew it wasn't hers. She could have asked you if it was yours if she wasn't sure. It's quite an aggressive act to do what she did, I'd be really annoyed if I was you.
Just think, if you found a bag left at your house after a friend or family member had visited, would you throw it away? I certainly wouldn't, I'd be texting them to tell them in case they needed it urgently. Why is she being such a cow to you?

@nostyleandnoclothes exactly ! And it's little bag of emergency things you have compiled .....even if I am nowhere near having to need a puff, if I know if don't have that pouch I start to think I do....plus over the years have narrowed it down to absolutely what I would need to get by for 24 hours without access to medication.

I nowadays presumably food waste, which is the most likely thing to have gone really rancid over three days, will be in a separate food bin or at least in a tied up bin bag?

OK then, it was an accident.

Can you just say to her, "I accept you didn't mean to throw it away, but if you won't replace it and I can't afford to; Can you go and fish it out of the bin Mum? And I can try to salvage it?"
Might be enough to guilt her into paying for replacement ?

Your mum is being unreasonable not to try snd dig it out of the bin to be honest. I think mine would as she usually goes above and beyond, but sometimes she can randomly not want to do certain things do no guarantees! I would go over and look myself or forget it though in your position as it’s partly your fault for leaving it behind. I wouldn’t ask my mum to pay but would feel cross. Your mum probably didn’t appreciate the value of the contents and didn’t want it hanging around . Not saying I would chuck out my daughters makeup bag though.

I know people who have no patience, skill or discretion whatsoever in tidying up, and they will literally just throw everything that they don't recognise or which doesn't normally live there into a black bin bag - and then be genuinely pleased with themselves for how efficiently they 'cleared up' and 'dealt with' all the 'mess'.

Whether it's actual rubbish, recycling or not rubbish at all, the whole lot goes into the same bag and slung straight into the (general waste) wheelie bin.

Is your DM one of these people, OP?

No - they don’t have separate food waste collection or anything like that. They just put food waste straight into the black bin.

Sounds a lot like them!

Oh FFS. Just go and get it out of the bin. Batshit behaviour from both of you.

Is her house really messy?

I can’t understand finding something someone left behind and binning it 😆

she should either fish it out of the bin or replace it.

This is bizarre. Who throws away someone else's purse. What if it had had keys and drivers licence and cards. This is not OK. I absolutely would dig in the bin for 9 expensive lipsticks. Are you sure she's not nicked your collection.

Just say, ‘Mum I know it was an accident but it will cost me £150 to replace it all and I don’t have that kind of money spare to spend on this, would you be able to help me replace it’

It doesn’t make sense that they won’t replace it for you when they do things like this. ⬆️

If you told them you couldn’t afford to replace it, they genuinely wouldn’t?

Annoyingly, my DH has done this kind of thing on occasion. He doesn't think and doesn't see the problem. I just go through the bin. Most things will be ok especially if in a bag.

You are both weird.

Ask your Mum to retrieve it seeing that she threw it in the bin.
If she says no then empty the bin on her kitchen floor and find your stuff.
Maybe then she'll think twice about chucking stuff away without checking.

TBH, everyone's behaviour sounds fairly normal to me... but I'm from a neurodivergent family.

Buying replacement stuff rather than looking for the original Apple watch or missing phone? Totally valid way of avoiding the executive function required to go hunting around.

Binning everything to get the cleaning dealt with? Again, normal way of just about managing to appear normal.

Collecting and hoarding a ridiculous amount of lipsticks which are pretty much the same to anyone else but subtly different to you?

Again, it would happen in my family.

You're being precious. Wear a face mask and rubber gloves.

Weird situation. I absolutely would offer to get it out of the bin and clean it if I had ‘accidentally’ chucked it away so I think it’s weird she’s not offering to do that. Failing that if I were you I would at least give it a go myself, it might be salvageable after a good wipe down.