Omg such anality from pil. Come and share your anal behaviour stories (lighthearted)

[ledkr]

We are with pil at present and they are very sweet but so bloody uptight about everything.
Bil has been away for a week so he left car with pil so that it "wasn't left in the street" it has a steering lock on and fil takes it for a drive each day! The car is an old banger worth about two hundred quid.
Kids can't even eat a banana without a table cloth,mat and plate
Leaving the house to walk to shops is a major ordeal. Costs hats gloves change of shoes everything switched off at the wall last minute run upstairs for wallets. I could have been there and back.
So I'm asking you to entertain me with similar stories to help me through the day.

This thread is hilarious. My dad is obsessed with anyone potentially losing their mobile phone, so you cannot leave a phone anywhere really without Dad finding you about 10 mins later, phone in hand, saying, 'is this yours?'. It's become a catchphrase in our house. Ironically, their house is a bloody bombsite, counters covered with recipes from magazines, random bags of tableclothes for the village hall, dozens of ancient biros, countless receipts, boiler maintenance manuals etc. My DH boils as their house is 'club tropicana', whereas his parents' house is bloody freezing and everyone is expected to wear two jumpers and a scarf as a given.

And at both of their houses, hot water is only available at certain undisclosed times of the day.

Some of these are hilarious!

My mil is anal.

When going out, she puts her coat on, squirts her awful minging old lady perfume and puts a humbug in her mouth. Every time! We cant forget the humbug! Even if she is just coming to mine, a 5 minute scooter ride away, in goes the humbug.

She is very frugal with electricity. Refuses to put any lights on in her house until the street lighs go on. Woe betide anyone who puts the lighs on earlier.

She eats the same foods on the same as of the week, and has cups of tea exactly two hours apart.

Love this thread....very nervous that I can see myself already in some of these posts though

Both mine and DH's parents seemed to have escaped this so far, but my mum found it hilarious when she went on a golfing weekend with her DP and his club. They stayed near some naice towns but the other golfing wives would not go out whilst their husbands were playing in case they came back early. Mum asked why, the answer was that they had to run baths for their DHs! The when DM confessed to never having done this for her DP sounded most amusing!

Oooh *LaQueen that's minging. Are you tempted to take your own bed linen?

Love this thread, hilarious

FIL is the only one who can open the stair gate in their house.

They have an upside-down house, so the living room is upstairs. Any time you want a wee (I don't fell comfortable using their en-suite), another drink, to get your book, anything, you get up, he jumps up, opens the gate for you, reattaches it.
you do whatever.
then when you come back up the stairs he jumps up and lets you back in.

Drives.Me.Demented.

I'll often just say I'm tired and go to bed (whilst getting another drink on the way) to avoid the issue.

PIL do loads of the other things too, but they aren't bad really.
My parents aren't anal at all. Which can be crazy-inducing in the opposite way.

Does anyone else have the experience of them being massively impressed by 'how-to' books?

Anything you suggest to my dad, he will try to buy you the book - he has multiple copies of 'what to do when someone dies' from the deaths of all of my grandparents and he treasures a 1950s guide to DIY and a 70s car repair manual which he solemly gets out when he wants to change the oil. Which? is his bible. You are not allowed to suggest you'd just google for up-to-date information: the internet is fallible, but printed books are always right.

He also takes so long finding the right how-to book that he got in touch to tell me he had a five-book shortlist of the best books on how to buy a second-hand car several days after I'd gone out and bought the thing.

Btw, I forget who said about their PIL not letting them leave toiletries etc. in the bathroom, but my mum does this too. You may not leave a razor on the side or a box of tampax by the loo (even if it's in a box that hides what it is which mine are). At my place she routinely comes out of the loo with handfulls of things and a prim look, before telling me I've 'left' these 'out' and where should she put them away?

My mother believes tampax and towels and the like should be hidden in the hotpress. She is shocked that we have a wicker thing in the bathroom where they live.

They also possess an encyclopedia from about 1960 that they use to look things up and refuse to use google for such things. Same as yours LRD, the actual printed book is trusted so much more, even if it's years out of date.

Oh wow I'm not alone. Can relate to so many of these.

The begrudging faffing. Everything is a huge faff to 'be polite' but begrudged so you feel bad for it.

One Xmas the ILs decided to resolve the Xmas dinner faff by having Xmas dinner for Xmas eve tea instead. And you must eat everything on your overloaded plate else it will me repeated to all visitors for years. (One of my ILs friends is identified to me ad the one who didn't eat everything at a meal once). So we were stuffed on Xmas eve, went to bed and couldn't sleep for food sweats, then Xmas day we had nothing to do except stare at each other. It was only us and the ILs. No excited kids who wanted the time to play.

My parents and in laws are looking saner and saner all the time.

Except my step-mom who is a total fruit loop to the extent she decorates her house in such a way that she has to put throws over the furniture so no one stains the white couches and you weren't allowed to actually go into the living or dining rooms when I was a child.

Once she moved to FL and had a 'great room' she used to fret that one of the grandchildren would dare to sit on a dining room chair.

I was actually shocked when we went to visit for her daughter's wedding and they had a get together the night before with all of the out of town guests and she had actually removed the covers from the sofas and people were eating pizza while sitting on them! Her face was a picture all night long.

I still remember, and I must have been about 10, when my Pops, my dad's dad, spilt a glass of red wine on the living room sofa. You could tell she wanted to kill him but managed to stay polite!

Here's a couple for you.. Staying with parents over Xmas, df was aghast I wanted to have a shower as he'd just 'cleaned the bathroom'!! Also Dm put one, yes one, rasher of bacon back in the fridge after making bacon sandwiches!? Just cook the bloody thing!

recharge - we obviously have similar parents.

If I want to really bother my dad, I will send DH out to pick up shopping including tampax. It is Wrong, apparently.

Oh and plates have to be warmed in the oven or food will get cold!? Wtf?!

Great thread

It drives my DM nuts that I use a milk jug for gravy and use the milk straight out of its plastic jug.

She bought me an insulated gravy jug for Xmas this year. But it's tiny so guess I'll still be using the milk jug.

No one except my MIL is allowed to make FIL a coffee. If I try and sneak one to him she snatches it away, pours it down the sink and makes him a proper cup. I kid you not.

Oh another FIL one!

No way can you eat in his car, absolutely not!

But even worse is if you touch the windows when they mist up

I did that in the early days, never forgotten.

He would truly shudder at the state of under the DC car seats and our windows

LRD - I am going to visit them later in the week and find a way to casually drop into the conversation that DP is going to pick me up tampax. DF's face would be an absolute picture.

My in laws not only switch everything off at the wall and unplug (literally everything is also connected to a circuit breaker), but they DISCONNECT THE WASHING MACHINE FROM THE MAINS EACH AND EVERY TIME THEY USE IT. Sorry to shout, but I don't often get the chance to let this out.

They have a different cloth for every conceivable purpose, including separate arse flannels which are actually brown.

We serve gravy straight from the pan here. Unless there are lots of us (or we're trying to be posh haha) then we serve it from either a teapot (which we never use otherwise) or a big plastic juice jug thing.

Drives MIL crackers. She's bought us various gravy boats for the purpose but they're too small. The Christmas-themed one is good though.

It is such a generational thing, isn't it?

dont want to be a party pooper but i think we can all learn some frugal tips from this generation.....,

1. heavily preggers - v v hot weather - at bar about to buy drinks, FIL insisits he will pay - argy bargy from me - give in to him. I ask for TWO sparkling mineral waters - as v thirsty and HOT and can see only small bottles.

FIl returns to table to table with three drinks only, two spk minerals which HE pointedly drinks one of - and drink for dh.

2. Mil has back door mat - with dish towl like cloth on top - with a smaller dust type rag placed on top of that = I dont step on door mat at all.

3. Specific sinks for handwashing for different guests

4. had heart attack about wood floor warping after spying a " single" drop of tea running down my cup - therein ensued much drama and excitement after DH went to get a cloth to wipe the drip from my cup and he got the wrong cloth.

5. offered to help with dishwasher once too - BIG MISTAKE, spoken to softly and carefully whislt it was explained which plate went where - which cloth to use....and how glasses dont go in....I nealry asked him if he could put his hands on that manual he must have written on how things are done in this PRISON...

6. panic after each meal until plates safley away in dishwasher

7. Panic when a handbag strays into the kitchen or any room of the house - again in very gentle voice - explained - that handbags and all bags MUST stay in the utility room, as he has seen what happens when things get - chaotic....

8. mil deeply offended by any dirt of filth you leave her to clean up, such as a stray hair ( just the' one' you missed whilst sweating cleaning up water marks after a shower),

9. the whole upstairs of the house carpets CHANGED - new ones brought after DH sicked up - chicken tika massala on the floor up there....( luckily they didnt know it was after eating too many magic mushrooms ......even more lucky that when he came round he hadnt - as he thought....taken a bloody spray can and scrawled all over the walls in the fucking "no go zone room" where no is allowed expcept xmas, and even then with no colored liquids...

My DPs wash their recycling.

They also have some elaborate shower routine which occurs at the crack of dawn as their power shower 'uses too much water'. On to get wet, off to soap up, on to rinse, off to apply shampoo, on to rinse off all for no more than 30s intervals.

BUT DF will wear a shirt a day and put it in the wash to be laundered and ironed by my DM regrdless of whether it needs it or not. They are both obsessed by us putting a load of washing on whenever we stay with them even if we are only there for one night.

They've been having a butter war for most of their 40 year marriage. DM likes to keep it in the fridge, DF would actually like to spread it on his toast. A wild solution might be to take it out when they get up at he crack of the sparrows wotsit but noooo they just grumble about the other leaving it out/putting it away. DH started microwaving it so he could spread it when we stay with them and now DM leaves it out especially for him. DF is fuming.

would some of you please give ages for these lunatics?

only I'm 61 & don't do any of this; I want to know when I'm supposed to start

HyvaPaiva
You are setting an old lady's mind at rest now.
Mine are not as detailed as those you receive, but are to make sure sure that I am met at the airport or hotel by my busy son.

Mine often include a list of restaurants he might like, as he has a limited vegetarian who eats fish diet (see another thread!) so I hope I am not too set in my ways.

Thanks for your kind post