Guests at Xmas who critique your home

[FluffyCushion123]

Does anyone find the ‘helpful’ hints and tips of a well meaning relative really fucking stressful? I’ve got a really close relative coming who I love to bits but they are massively into decor and are a real foodie so things that they think of as making conversation or being helpful just adds to my stress levels.

No, I don’t want any advice about kitchen gadgets, recipe hacks, nice artwork that would transform my home or anything else in that vein.

The problem is that for them it’s just a regular conversation topic but to me it feels threatening somehow and stressful ( they are very stylish so feelings of inadequacy that it brings about doesn’t help).

Any advice? I usually find myself being quite contrary in response which is passive aggressive I suppose. How can I deal with this better?!

My dm decided to ‘tidy’ my under sink cupboard once and totally rearrange it, whilst I was recovering from an op.It didn’t need tidying and I reverted it back to how it was after she left.

Just remembered one that happened to my poor Dsis...she was having our DM and DF over for a Thanksgiving meal...while she was in the kitchen, DM completely stripped the beautifully decorated dining room table of all plates, flatware,
appropriate decorations, table cloth, etc and replaced it all with stuff she'd Brought from home...
Never even asked my Dsis or mentioned that she was going to do it...in walks Dsis to find a completely different laid table! Gobsmacked!

@Nomoreusernames1244

I used to leave her to it to avoid the PA comments and move it back when she’d gone until one day I went to work and came home to an electrician moving a light fitting! She also gave all my coloured sheets to charity and bought me white as they’re “cleaner”.

Wow! What did you say to her about these? Particularly the electrician incident?

I used to have this problem with my mum. She’d make suggestions as to what we should do with something. Sometimes her suggestions were similar to what we’d already decided (eg how to decorate the living room) so once we’d done it our way she’d try to take all the credit for it because it was similar to what she’d suggested.

She would also make these suggestions and try to have conversations with me at inconvenient times. It’s Christmas Eve, DS is excited and we are trying to put mince pie etc out for Santa, get photos and do all the usual Christmas Eve stuff and she’s trying to engage me in conversations about living room decor. That used to piss me off even more than the suggestions.

I used to respond to her with we’d already decided what we are going to do and where, when and how and whilst it shut that conversation down it didn’t stop the behaviour in general.