to feel very miffed with my neighbours???

[cantmummyhaveabreak]

Ok, so my Neighbours are a nightmare to say the very least... we hired a skip on monday morning to have a massive clearout. It was removed by tuesday morning.

It was mainly clearing the garden but while it was there we thought we may aswell put the kids old toys on top and if anyone wanted to take them then they were free to do so, if they'd not been taken by evening we planned to take them back in and freecycle or send them to the charity shop.

Neighbours kids arrive home from school and knock on the door asking if it was ok to take the shoe rack off the skip, to which we said yes. Only to find the kids in our drive emptying the skip onto the floor and literally taking every single thing that was worth keeping.

Fair enough i thought, if they are going to use them it saved us taking them anywhere.

Only this morning as i was doing the school run i see that their drive way had Ds's old toys smashed up all over it, and also to see that DD's old chair had been broken up and thrown all over the field/park at the end of our road. I'm really upset about this purely because someone else could have used them things. DS (5yo) recognised his old toy and asked why they'd broken it, and DD1 (3yo) got a tad upset about her chair too- mainly becasue she'd not wanted to part with it really but i said it would go to another little girl who didn't have one as she'd got a new one...

I explained to DS and DD1 that some children dont appreciate toys as much as them and it was a bit mean of them to take them and break them but they weren't ours anymore as we'd let them take the things out of the skip.

However i am now a tad miffed that they took everything and only actually asked for one item anyway... plus DH and DS had to clear the drive of all the things they emptied out of the skip too...

Please tell me IANBU... I'm just feeling a little for my DC's...

yanbu to feel pissed off. but i don't think there's anything you can do. except feel that you're teaching your kids to value stuff, to share/recycle and your neighbours aren't

the only small "but" (and it's v. small) is that perhaps, because they were on the skip, the neighbours thoughgt you were throwing them away?

They have clearly assumed that because they were in the skip they were rubbish. Doesn't excuse the mess at the end of the street though.

little shits

I can see the point that they may have seen them as rubbish, but we had covered all the garden stuff with an old duvet and placed all the household items and things worth being recycled on the top... they could see that the items they took were still in very good condition, they weren't broken or anything so it doesn't excuse them smashing them up and littering the park with it. I have to walk through the park 6x a day with school runs and i'm going to feel bad that it's effectively my DC's things littering the park.

YANBU but if I were you I would clean up the mess and chalk it up to experience.

TPL- i think i'll be doing that... i kinda wish i had the guts to knock next door and ask her to get her kids to clear it as it's littering and i know it was them... unfortunately i'm a whimp so will clear it myself on the way back from getting DD1 from nursery in a bit.

yes, the point abvout thinking they were being thrown away doesn't really excuse breaking decent stuff. and certainly doesn't excuse the mess.

i'd be like you though - too bloody wary of aggression to ask them to clear it up . sympathy.

Why on earth would you put stuff in a skip if you wanted it to be reused? Is this some kind of sophisticated social system I've not heard about, or are you just beyond the reach of Oxfam etc?

I always have a quick shufty in a skip to see if there's anything good! I saw one full of good quality old doors a few weeks ago but it had gone by the afternoon.
I'd be really pissed off too- what little horrors!