Why would she bring used soap to leave at my house?

[Samiamnot]

DM visited recently. She always brings a lot of stuff with her. Always leaves things here like toothbrush, nighty etc so she doesn't need to bring things with her whenever she visits (lives far away so stays 3-4 nights every month or so). That's all fine and she has space in the spare room that is just for her stuff.

She also always brings stuff of hers like little notepads she no longer wants and presents it as a gift for me or my children, along with little things she's bought new like socks. (Although she has now also taken to 'gifting' her old socks to my eldest daughter).

On her most recent visit she brought a used bar of soap from her bathroom and left it in my downstairs toilet, along with the bar of soap I had put there AND the new bar of soap SHE put there just before Christmas. To be clear, this is not the en suite to the guest room that she uses. It is the downstairs toilet, next to the kitchen and living room.

What on earth is behind this behaviour? It's like an animal marking their territory (ie my house) or a squirrel hiding nuts all over a park. I can't imagine that sje does this in anyone else's house that she visits, so something to do with our relationship.

Is it possible she was on a low income when she was at your stage of life and would have appreciated this stuff, so assumes you will too? I find with my own mother it’s often hard to convince her that we don’t need any more things and that in fact what we are short of is space not clobber.

I would just keep anything you want and bin the rest.

Yeah, it's possessive and controlling behaviour. She's pissing up your lamp-post, essentially

Just firmly refuse all attempts to foist her random rubbish on you, every single time. Bin it in front of her if it's utter crap like the used soap, otherwise give her one chance to take it home, then bin it.

Mine was violent and a criminal as well, so I'm NC now, but in the loooooooong years of putting up with this sort of lower-level crap, I found consistent, firm enforcement of boundaries was the only thing that kept me sane. Don't allow her to raise the temperature or goad you into shouting or trading insults - just maintain that the answer is no, and she can choose to accept it graciously or she can leave.

My mother in law is like this. Her family were very poor and she knows what it's like not having enough - that feeling has never left her. She also has hoarding tendancies and has a fridge and cupboards absolutely full to bursting despite living alone as she remembers all too well what it was like to have nothing.

She leaves all her random tat here as well..she has drawers full here. She also gifts us loads of junk. She can't bear to throw it out, can't use the internet (so eBay/Freecycle etc aren't an option) and lives a fair distance away from her nearest charity shop.

The plus side is she rarely remembers what she's got us and so it's easy enough to bin or give away.

Having your preferred soap at hand is one thing but the other stuff would (and does) drive me nuts! If it wasn't for her dodgy knee I'm sure she'd pee around my house if she could!

I have got better at telling her there just isn't room for XYZ and we've had to give it away. As someone else on here said, there's no problem as long as they don't have to do the throwing away!

This makes me miss my mother and her habit of bringing marigolds and hand cream to every place I’ve ever lived.

Sounds like something my MIL would do. She likes to declutter but she hates throwing things out so she brings them to us instead.

Mad thread. 😂

I would find all of this annoying, OP (though I know you didn’t say you were annoyed). I need my home very orderly to offset the chaos in my brain so random clutter and pointless gifts (are they gifts…?) would be no good. (I would let her have her own soap and stuff though, if she said she didn’t like mine.)

I’d absolutely just ask my mother what she was up to and tell her I didn’t want her to bring things unless it was something she preferred to use. She’d huff, for sure, but she’d stop doing it.

@sadpapercourtesan

Yeah, it's possessive and controlling behaviour. She's pissing up your lamp-post, essentially

Just firmly refuse all attempts to foist her random rubbish on you, every single time. Bin it in front of her if it's utter crap like the used soap, otherwise give her one chance to take it home, then bin it.

Mine was violent and a criminal as well, so I'm NC now, but in the loooooooong years of putting up with this sort of lower-level crap, I found consistent, firm enforcement of boundaries was the only thing that kept me sane. Don't allow her to raise the temperature or goad you into shouting or trading insults - just maintain that the answer is no, and she can choose to accept it graciously or she can leave.

How can you possibly know this? Just because you didn't like your MIL doesn't mean all MILS are possessive and controlling. What a daft extrapolation.

It"s to do with waste and wanting to contribute and perhaps being out of touch , or thrifty/tight and tons of other older people things...I'm pretty sure I will be doing similar myself by that age. I can see it creeping in. Can see it in older friends. My DM has a thing about ham sandwiches. She seems to bring them everywhere or offer them or randomly just give me a round wrapped in foil. I am a veggie and both DC hate ham. I just take them now and either the dog has a bit or I bin them. Happy faces all round.
My exDH had a thing about never leaving the house without a chewy bar and going to the toilet twice.
I only like certain shaped cups. I like to bring one with me on holidays. See we all do it!

@Samiamnot

But she'd already brought multiple bars of soap and left them around my house on her previous visit...

Maybe she's saying you all need to wash more??

@Regularsizedrudy

Isn’t this just want mums do? Bin the stuff when she leaves and don’t give it headspace

No it's not. Why would it be something that 'mums' do? Wouldn't occur to me

Honestly, with some of the other answers on here you'd think it was AIBU, not relationships.

I think it's all a bit odd @Samiamnot I'm not surprised you're questioning it.

I think there's a thing where the children of the WW2 generation (the ones who had a really bad time), inherited some of their trauma and have anxieties and behaviours directly related to their parents' experiences. For the children born after the war, there wasn't a lot of stuff for the majority of people.
The abundance of now is mind boggling. All of you merrily binning , if it is still in its packaging, please drop it off at the food collection box at your preferred supermarket. When you have grown up with very little, 'don't waste' was drummed in daily and it probably remains very hard for your mother to throw away a perfectly good bar of soap. You have a young family, she probably thinks you get through loads of soap, so brings it to you.

@Hoolihan

My in-laws are a bit ike this, they just want to give us stuff regardless of how wanted/needed/appropriate it is. And they never throw anything away so they're always coming down from the loft with random crap for the children. I think they really want to get rid of stuff but don't know how (slight hoarder tendancies) and also they love us but don't know how to express that other than through the unwanted gift of a box of glassware collected from the Esso garage in the 80s.

Think this is about right. My mum wanted to get rid of stuff but couldn’t quite bring herself to throw them away. So in her mind she was giving us something useful that we would use. Just chuck it in the bin and don’t mention it.

DM does something similar. Sends 5 YO a bundle of dog eared old cards with random rural watercolours of places he’s never visited. Sent DD an ancient opened packet of tiny gummed craft shapes which exploded everywhere when I opened the envelope and had to be vacuumed up.
Both were so disappointed as they rarely get letters and DM was bigging it up saying she’d posted them a treat. Then she was cross because the DC didn’t send thank you letters.
I am now much more blunt and thank her for the thought, but tell her the DC aren’t going to want that and suggest bubbles or sweets that they might actually enjoy.

My very elderly mother is always ‘decluttering’ and can be quite misguided about it. Eg handing down really old clothes in case they’re handy for the garden; socks yes; an old pillow that the cat might like; even an old toothbrush once in case I wanted to clean my taps with it . I think she just feels she doesn’t need much anymore and might save me a few pennies, but it upsets me, not because of the items, but because her sense of what’s acceptable has gone way off."
Yes - this resonates. Like she doesn't know what's acceptable. Does your mother do this with other people or just with you? Mine only does it, to this extent, with me but I think she often gifts inappropriate things to others too. She got my 8 month old daughter a game labelled for 6 year olds.

Constantly giving away the most random objects was one of the first signs of my Nanna's dementia. If this is a new thing, not realising what is acceptable, then keep an eye out.

Yes, war thrift.

My mum is like this. She remembers her ration book after WW2. She hates to see anything go to waste. She collects slivers of soap and puts them in a Lakeland mold to make a fresh bar.

She assumes that my generation are the same and is always trying to give me fondue sets and other tat which she no longer wants.

It's not territory marking, it's a reluctance to throw anything away.

My sister used to give me bags of clothes her girls had outgrown which was lovely but in the bag there'd be old crayons loose, broken toys and crap which were probably littering the bottom of the wardrobe. It's like she sorted out the clothes and chucked some litter in too...as repayment for the free stuff!

MIL buys my kids weird stuff too....things like oil diffusers with the long poky sticks when they were about 6 years old.

My mum wouldn't throw anything away either. I remember one time dd announced last minute as usual that she needed stationery for the school fayre. Too late, shops were shut. Mum turned up the next morning with a brand new (in the 80's yes) pack of nice paper and pen in a sort of plastic presentation box with ribbon (you know the ones), covered in what I can only assume was 30 years of nicotine and dust. I was horrified! Strangely, mum just couldn't see the problem. It was unused and therefore still good! (I did slip it away quietly so as not to offend mum). She wasn't a doddery old lady either, she was still working at the time, there was no excuse!

I'd fuck the rubbish stuff in the bin/recycling and the rest goes to charity, if its serviceable.

My mum and MIL are similar. They didn’t grow up without but have spent years acquiring random stuff that they don’t want to send to landfill so they palm it off on others, mainly me. Some are things that they’ve acquired as gifts from others. I don’t like waste but, like others have said , I value space. I think that younger generations have had to live in smaller spaces and have never been able to rely on having a loft space or garages for heaps of stuff you don’t use.
It’s meant with good intentions but sometimes I wish they’d try to see it from another point of view. Do they generally think they are helping or do they just have a sense of relief that they don’t have to do the difficult thing of throwing something away? I don’t know.