To want MIL to stop doing our laundry?

[HannahR21]

MIL is here every other Tuesday looking after our toddler whilst we both work. She is really helpful, and tries to do stuff round the house. Recently, she has started putting washes on. I find this a step too far - the first time this happened, there wasn’t a great deal of washing in our basket - it would have fit in one wash. She left one item in the basket which was a rather ‘risque’ all in one bedroom outfit of mine if you get what I mean. She had obviously seen it, and decided to leave it (and nothing else) in the basket.

DH says she’s being helpful and it saves me a job so I should be grateful. I find it..invasive? Fully appreciate it may be a ‘me’ issue but thought it’d get some impartial views.

It’s highly intrusive. Tell your DH to tell her to stop going in your wash basket, and make clear that if he doesn’t, you will, and you will not bother trying to be polite.

Really? Without wanting to be crude, do you never have the odd bit of discharge or period leakage?
Of course I have!
But I put my knickers in cold water with hydrogen peroxide straight away so they dont stain and ruin them.

You're a lot more organised than me, in that case!

You're a lot more organised than me, in that case!
I've always been really self conscious about my knickers since I got caught out with my period in my teens. I always have a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in for stains, cleaning and whitening whites.

So I have no issues with my mum doing it but my partner hates it, particularly his boxers. He finds it weird that his MIL has touched and washed his boxers. That being said, I'm not sure how I would feel if it was my MIL and I love her to pieces!

I think let her if it's her way of helping and being useful. My dad always used to wash up even though we had a dishwasher. It was his way of helping, and he was very good at it.

This thread is wild. Why on earth should OP buy a secret second wash basket to hide her sexy undies in when the very bloody obvious solution is to just ask MIL to stop as OP doesn’t want it?! Too many posters are projecting their own desire for laundry help onto this thread. 😵‍💫

Reminder, it is neither helpful nor useful to insist on doing something in someone's home that they don't want, don't need and find intrusive.

And even suggeting that someone hide their laundry basket - thus creating even more stress and hassle for them, rather than telling the woman to stop behaving intrusively - is actually quite fucking bonkers.

And your husband is rude to you and a mummy's boy. Tell him to sort his mother's boundary bulldozing behaviour out.

So does your mum do the laundry even if your partner hates it?

It's not help, because it's not required and OP actively doesn't want her to interfere in this fashion.

Could you do it this way - tell her you run the wash overnight as it’s cheaper. Then leave the wet stuff for her to hang out or dry stuff to fold. That way you control what’s in there and she gets to help you.

Better still, the woman who doesn't live there can learn some manners and do as she's told.

What? The women who’s looking after her grand child for free?

you sound delightful.

What? You think offering childcare gives you a free pass to be an interfering, overbearing bulldozer with no manners who ignores what the woman who actually lives there actually wants?

You don't sound delightful. At all.

I think you know what I meant. Not sure why you’re being so aggressive in your posts on this thread.

Blimey. In my world, helping a busy family with domestic tasks is seen as very good manners and helpful behaviour.

As for MIL doing ‘as she’s told’…. Can you point out the bit where the OP’s MIL has been told?

It’s not good manners if you don’t want them to do it

Do some posters just walk into other people’s homes and randomly go into their bedrooms to sort out the laundry basket

I wish I'd known about that in my teens, I was always having to soak mine as I had horrendously heavy periods back then. 😬

I don’t think the MIL knows they don’t want her to do it.

Always polite to ask first

The fact that a grown man doesn't see the major ick factor in his mother washing his keks would have me worrying about his level of detachment from her, and whether he identified as an adult or her little boy.

Serious apron strings issues here.

Tell MIL she is not to do your washing any more.

Blimey. In the real world rifling through a relative's underwear and interfering in an unhelpful way in their home without any discussion is always bad manners.

So anyway, doing something unhelpful, un- needed and unwanted in someone else's home isn't helping. OP, tell your husband to stop being so rude to you and tell his mother to quit it.

Problem solved.

He doesn't want to tell his mother because he thinks it will hurt her feelings which it probably would. Just move the damn clothes basket or your yourself leave her a note to say: thanks so much for doing our washing last time no need to do it today! And she will get the hint.

Much more importantly, the husband has hurt OPs feelings by telling her to shut up about something she has every right to find interfering and boundary bulldozing in her own home.

And he needs to apologise for that.

And if his mother is such a delicate flower she can't be asked not to rifle through people's clothes and underwear without melting down, it's best that it comes from him.

You mean like when you let a toddler 'help' Mummy or Daddy to make muffins?

For Christ's sake, she's a grown woman. If she can't handle 'MIL, please stop doing our laundey, we prefer to do it ourselves', she has a serious problem.