MIL addiction to TEMU shopping

[MossGreenUmbrellas]

Will start by saying I know she means well but this is getting out of control. I’m a minimalist who loves things that can last almost forever so they ‘go through life’ with me so to speak but now we’ve got a storeroom full of junk.

I have a nice Patagonia jacket that I’ve been using for years and years and years. It tore while I was out with DH’s family. MIL said she could get them for cheap for me (from temu), I said no thanks I have something I’d like in mind and will be going to get it from the store next month. She’s told me she has ordered 3 pieces for me from temu!

I really have no intentions of wearing them. Aside from questionable quality I just don’t want to wear some knockoff or any of this fast fashion stuff.

This is a recurring pattern. Told her time and time again no thanks, I don’t want her to buy me stuff, I can’t use it anyway. Told her I don’t trust the quality and want to get my own stuff. Even did the angle where I was saying I don’t know how ethical the manufacturing is. Pointless. She stills buy them.

Once it was a variation of a Black Hole Duffel I use. Once I got 10 faux leather straps for my watch. Twice it was some Birkenstock looking sandals.

Telling her directly doesn’t work. Telling DH to tell her directly falls flat cause she’ll just say she’s trying to do something nice for us.

I feel bad for throwing them straight away because she did spend money on them but the charity shop near us won’t take them either!!

AIBU? I dread our visits now cause 100% of the time there’s more poor quality temu crap I’d have to put in storage.

There's nothing you can do, just put it straight in the bin and move on.

I'm a minimalist and environmentalist, so I absolutely hate doing this. But I'm also a realist, and there's literally nothing you can do. Shoving it in a charity bag, when you know that place won't be able to sell it and it will actually cost them money to dispose of, is just being wilfully ignorant.

My mum doesn't know about temu (thank god) but will buy anything "cheap" and gives me a few bags of useless stuff each time we visit. I've asked her to stop but she won't listen.

There's no point wasting time worrying or repeating ourselves. It's better to spend our time campaigning the government on environmental issues, volunteering with a group, or making changes in our own lifestyle.

Maybe they shouldn't put the unsolicited bags through my door then, they bother to deliver them so I fill them.

We have few Salvation Army bins in our county, do you have something similar you could drop them off to? If she isn't going to listen it seems a shame to bin the stuff as I’m sure someone could make use of it.

You do know that the unsolicited bags are not proper charities, but second hand merchants who donate a very low sum per tonne to a charity?

I'm using them instead of the bin or recycling centre so they do their job.

But it's not getting resold, reused or recycled is it? It's just getting put in a different bin. So what's the point?

Isn’t it being sold as rags? Otherwise why would the company want them?

It saves on trips to the tip.

I had a bit of a mental episode recently where I ordered a load of stuff from Temu and Shein. It is all absolutely crap. Never again! OK the sun lounger was not bad for £56 but other than that, I wasted a lot of money. I wouldn't be seen dead in any of the clothes and everything just looks cheap and awful.

No, I take a little bit back. My lesbian mermaid shirt I got from there is not bad.

Well fair enough, if you don't have enough bin space and want to punish that charity I suppose you can do that. I think OPs concerns are more about the ethical aspects of MIL shopping on temu.