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.

I've remembered my mum takes all of the wrapping paper say at xmas and before throwing it away takes each piece and flattens it smooth and then folds it beautifully. So by the end of tidying up she has a pile of neatly folded used wrapping paper. She also keeps the gift tags so she can reread them later.

I offered to take her xmas cards down the other day. Shge declined as apparently she likes to read through them as she is doing it.

My father has worn the same style of shoe for as long as I can remember. He always a best black and best brown pair and then an older set for working in.

Sadly I seem to have inherited this trait as I realised this summer that I buy the same style of sandal every summer. As a treat I sometimes get a different colour to brown. But always return to brown the following year.

Bigbouncing, that's definitely extreme, putting household appliance birthdays on the kitchen calendar... What do they do, bake a cake?

Only if it's not the ovens birthday, he refuses to work on that day

Honestly, this isn't just parents tho fil is fabulous..
You cannot open the windows in his house, they are wired, locked and painted shut, at night you cannot have a door open (I tested this theory the one and only night I spent in his house and he got up 9 times to close my door it bothered him so much) no body knows what he does when he locks his house, neither of his sons have ever even seen a door key and no body is allowed to watch... We cannot go un announced as we must stay on the step until he feels its ok, this can be quite a while... ( an hour is the longest I have tolerated it)
This is all about the threat of being burgled.... Sad really
The evening meal is started when he gets up at 5.45, frying onions with the dawn... Gorgeous way to wake up

But in my own age group we have friends who won't allow shoes in the house and you have to take slippers with you, except they don't seem to be ok so you get lent fluffy socks anyway
A friend who cannot have gravy on his dinner plate but has to have some on a saucer on the side
One who must have everything eaten at the table, all cups and glasses have saucers and coasters, even kids treats are out of the packets and onto saucers (I wonder how many she has??)

My parents have got to know the surnames of everyone, which is very difficult for DD aged 3 who gets asked what her friends are called....

I'll stop now, I'm sure I'm just as OCD really

I just wanted to say that this is the first thread that has made me cry- it's so sweet and nostalgic, and my grandparents do half be things on this thread!
Brilliant thread- I've been reading it all day and long may it continue!

After a little bit of soul-searching I need to confess the following

All towels once used once must be submitted immediately for boil washing and cremating in the drier. Especially tea towels and cloths (face, cleaning and dish). Failure to obey towel system will result in everyone getting scabies or botulism.

All dishes must be washed in water so hot it scalds. If your hands ain't bright red afterwards, you are a slattern and botulism, etc will occur.

If I need to be somewhere on time I start from ETA and work backwards, mentally listing all I need to do before I leave up to and including toilet trips. I am never late for anything ever.

Someone kill me now.

My ILs house is a shithole. It hasn't been decorated in at LEAST 20 years. The kitchen is foul, the oven doesn't work (but never replaced because, you know, the hob does). The bathroom is bare mouldy rotten plaster. The toilet smells like a public bog and doesn't always flush.

When electrical appliances break they don't get thrown away. Dead televisions and computers are piled up in the dining room and covered with tablecloths.

Despite this every single door in the house is locked with a key every time they go out. Like they have anything worth stealing. That gives you all a little idea of how deeply dysfunctional they are.

I've stayed with them for Christmas twice and it's been unremittingly grim. NEVER AGAIN.

I do loads of the things on here! I am shocked to discover that some people don't do these things:

Carefully wash and rinse all washable recycling.
Rearrange the dishwasher, so it's loaded correctly.
Warm plates before serving hot food.
Arrive early when visiting, wait round the corner in the car, then pull up at the friend's house on the dot.
Create lists and spreadsheets for everything.
I could go on!

I have cackled out loud at this thread perhaps more than any other. Lovely reading. Has certainly made me appreciate my generous, relaxed PIL and, um, relatively normal parents more than ever.

That said...

MIL, a woman who has survived a murder attempt and spent her working life in an extremely challenging environment, refuses to drive outside of her home town in case she has to turn right.

FIL once sulked for the rest of the day after I refused his very insistent offer (made while we were eating lunch) of some tinned sardines made by the firm he was working for at the time. He is one who has improved massively since retirement!

DDad cannot countenance travelling by public transport. He must come in his own car. This means he and Stepmum will turn up two hours late for lunch, having fought their way across South London. He will be beet-faced and furious, swearing about roadworks, traffic etc. My dad has lived in South London all his life and driven all over the place for work. Roadworks and traffic should be no fucking surprise! However, should I suggest they get the train, he will visibly recoil and spend 20 minutes telling me how shit and unreliable they are.

The one exception to this is his annual trip into town, to Fortnum and Mason's to buy his Christmas pudding.

Love him really, however when they come for lunch now I make sure I ask them over two hours earlier than necessary so that DC are not crying/fainting with hunger by the time they arrive :)

chez pil
plastic sheeting around electric sockets and plastic sheeting on carpet at front and back door
plates on the wall and a bedpan on wall
hideous china ornaments on top of Telly
sofa was in pastic wrapping for ages
patterned thing looks like a tea towel over sofa and chair, keep it clean I'm told

MIL must arrive at least one hour early to catch the train. The tickets are already booked and so are the seats. She starts pacing the livingroom 2hrs before DH is due to drive her to the station. Seriously, has a train ever left early?

I have noticed that my Mum has taken to noting down the exact time that the street lighting switches on in the evening.

Indulge me as I hypothesise:

one of the key discrepancies between our generation and our parents' is that doing things "nicely" (showing high standards, hospitality, reasonable "comfortableness" in the financial sense) is more likely to be shown by our generation by deployment of consumables (generous and good wine & food; frequently painted houses and frequently updated bedlinen and clothes;) but in theirs by the ritual of using permanent items Properly (the gravy boats, the serving dishes, the napkins, the thingies standing about that have to be dusted, the ornamental bed spreads etc). None of this stuff is ever broken, replaced, tired of or chucked away. But you show you are polished (you show you care and have the resources to care) by the labour involved in fiddling about heating a teapot and getting out the cups and saucers which match, rather than by having a whole clutch of trendy pretty looking ikea mugs which tone with your stylish new kitchen.

They're both just ways of using material resources designed to make you seem nice and your guests feel good. At the end of the day it's all just stuff produced by labour somehow.... [wibbles off into considering that all energy comes from the sun]

PS just considered making a cup of tea and then thought "best not, I've already started the dishwasher." It's starting, isn't it?

(I already knew it was starting. When I went back to work and DP became SAHD I explained that when you buy salmon fillets in 2s, you have to open one packet and freeze them separately, because 3 is the right number for us for dinner - the small dcs share one. He looked at me as if I was bonkers. Tell me that is ok? They cost about £2 each, ffs!)

I used to work at a charity sending out direct mail. Every time we sent a letter out, a Mr X used to write back to us. He'd always send us a beautifully handwritten missive about the weather where he lived, and how he was sleeping.

One time his letter was about a week late. I was that close to finding his number in the phone book and checking to see if he was well. Thankfully, his letter arrived and all was well.

I hope he's well.

DM has a thing about trolleys for food. She has two in her flat in which she lives alone. She likes to use them to wheel food from her kitchen to her dining table - her kitchen/dining room is open plan so this is a journey of about two metres.

And what's the deal with older people and tea bags? Why can used tea bags not go straight in the bin? Why must they rest on one of those strange china tea bag spoons, or in a little cup, before joining their friends in the bin after an hour of cluttering up the work surface?

I have 2 china tea bag spoons.

This thread is fabulous! So funny but bitter sweet as well as I can definitely start to see my DPs getting old

My cousin almost died of embarrassment to time she took my now sadly departed DGF to have his hearing aid checked (as he complained it never helped him hear better we decided it must be faulty). After the Dr checked it DGF put it back in and Dr exclaimed, "but it's in the wrong ear!". God knows how he was jamming it in, these things are shaped for goodness sake probably because he only deigned to wear it once in a blue moon so forgot which ear it was prescribed for

DM travelled solo across central Asia when she retired a few years ago but she now doesn't notice that she hasn't switched off the kitchen tap in my kitchen when she comes to visit. "What, it's still running? But how can you tell?" Umm, the running water gives the game away...?

DM and DF bring their slippers when they visit and I always get given a pair when we visit DPIL but our floors are cold so I'm not sure if it's a sign of something or not

DFIL is a Mega worrier. He once drove over to our house to check on us when we didn't answer the phone (as we were napping with 10 day old DS and he got shouted at by me) He also has to park somewhere where he can see the car when they're staying away from home overnight.

Unfortunately DH and I are showing some early signs - I have dishwasher loading system and DH insists on keeping boxes from electrical goods we buy and asked if I minded if he throws out the old toilet seat when he was clearing out the garage yesterday wtf

But none of us display any worrying food weighing/hoarding/tupperware-ing tendencies (yet)

Oh sunny that's adorable. We spent last week with DH's DGM and she proudly told us she'd voted CDU as the candidate for state first minister had written her a personal letter ("It was addressed to Mrs. A Otto"). She wanted to show it to us but couldn't find it, "oh dear, I must have thrown it away once I sent off my postal vote." So sweet. We didn't have the heart to explain about automatic mailing lists.

Sparkling you need to step away from the china tea bag spoons. You'll be on the Scott's of Stow/Ambrose Wilson mailing list before you know it.

I may be ok drjohnson. We use the china tea bag spoon to put the teaspoon on, the tea bag goes in the food waste caddy.

mil has china dish she collects teabags in
china dish for resting wooden spoons

And they are in the shape of a teapot, not a spoon. Phew.