This is just mostly a rant but please feel free to share your thoughts if you’re in the same boat. Srsly, it makes me feel a little better knowing that I’m not the only one who’s dealing with a crazy unhygienic hoarder.
So I’m four months postpartum and my MIL decided to visit this weekend. For context, MIL is a hoarder who buys useless trash on sale and then lets it rot in her closets and then eventually passes them off as “gifts” to us. I generally tend to throw out anything she gives us the moment she leaves. I’m talking dusty, decrepit shit that you’d be embarrassed to even donate to a thrift store.
This time she decided to bring us three giant boxes of “food.” I use quotations because all the food she gave us was 5-10 years past the expiry date. Pasta and cereal from 2015, pasta sauce that she bought on sale 6 years ago, a fucking can of condensed milk from 2017. Before her trip, both myself and my husband specifically told her NOT to bring us any food. And she shat on our boundaries (as always) and brought her hoard into my home like it’s her storage space.
I lost it this time, guys. Normally I bite my tongue and just throw out her “landfill treasures” as soon as she leaves, but I lost my cool and just said “This belongs in the dump. I can’t even donate this to the local food bank because it’s older than my first born.” She tried to make excuses like how you can still use things and that the best before date is just a suggestion. I told her if that’s the case, then she can take this shit back and use it herself. Stop fucking buying shit on sale and then offloading it on us when it expires. I taped the boxes back up and told my husband go put them in her car. She’s been pouting ever since.
Bonus: She also takes it upon herself to do our dishes for some reason when she’s up here. She’s been loading our dishwasher over capacity and nothing is getting cleaned which leads to me re-doing dishes. Wasting time, energy and money. Yesterday, when I saw her trying to “help”, I quietly opened the dishwasher and re-arranged all the dishes in front of her and told her that when you stack dishes on top of one another, THEY DON’T GET WASHED PROPERLY. Her boomer ass is almost 70 and she still hasn’t learned how to use a dishwasher.
Monday can’t come fast enough.
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OMG, I thought you were going to say the dates were fairly recent and meh… I use “old” food but I don’t give it to other people.
5 YEARS?! Or MORE? That’s certifiable. I’m proud of you for being so blunt with her, internet stranger! I hope she has learned her lesson. And come on, Monday! lol
Frisk her and search her bags (DHās job) before you let her in. She brings anything, turn her away
Itās Monday here already, I wish you peace and quiet until it gets to you (and definitely peace and quiet after she leaves!)
Iām afraid sheād bring in pests along with the old food! God, there could be insects in the cardboard boxes!
I think we have the same mil. Mine just “cleaned out her candy drawer” and brought my children candy and gum that expired in 2007. This means that she has moved the same expired garbage from house to house when she moved. Wtf. And she volunteers to do the dishes which she also dries and puts away dirty in the wrong places.
I haven’t snapped about that stuff because she’s also racist, classist, sexist, and willfully ignorant. Thankfully we only see her a couple times a year.
Fuuuck. A boundary stopping nightmare MIL thatās a hoarder?!? Stuff of nightmares. Girl, I feel your pain. She sounds absolutely delightful. šš¤£ Hang in there mama!
I’ve taken a different tach when cleaning cabinets. Instead of attempting (and getting overwhelmed) the entire pantry, I open one door and do that one only. It doesn’t take as much time or energy. My family jokes to be careful when I do this cause I may throw them away also. I keep telling them to quit tempting me LOL. So while I’m close to your MiLs age, I don’t hesitate to chunk stuff if I have no clue how old it is. I have found it helps me to put MM/YY on everything when I buy it as it’s quicker to see the how long I’ve had it.
Hang in there.
I mean yea some things can be used past the expire date. Not a decade past. I would have put it right back in her car.
You did great with speaking your mind!!
My mom is 78 and tries to pass off clothing but I have gotten her to stop. However, that woman can pack a dishwasher like a pro. I covet her dishwasher, it is a Bosch, and that thing cleans 10 times better than my shitty apartment dishwasher.
ETA: correct appliance.
[deleted]
We eat some food past their best by date, but not 10 years past!Ā
My mil also gives us old food, usually something she has made thatās close to a week old. Or something that is stale. My husband has even noticed it.
That is very annoying but is it the only thing she does or is there more? I ask because if she is generally pleasant and respectful,Ā I would change my thinking about gifting crap. My mother is a hoarder and giving things away is the furthest she can push her mental illness towards getting rid of stuff. I take it as a “Yes she has had to work really hard to be able to do this.” And then i can just chuck it.
Much harder if she is also not a nice person, thoughĀ
My in laws would come over and insist on hand washing any dish they used (poorly) and then putting it back in my cabinet. Every time they did this, I took their plate and the one underneath it (that was now dirty) and put it in the dishwasher. They would say, oh we just want to help! I’m like you’re literally creating more work. Stop it.
5-10 YEARS?!?! I’m just… speechless.
That’s insane. Good for you for speaking up and putting your foot down!
I feel your pain – my MIL has decided she needs to clean out her whole house and keeps sending boxes of my husband’s old shit or shit she’s getting rid of and “thought you guys might want.” Nobody wants your old shit and you have TERRIBLE taste, plus I have an 8 week old and extremely limited closet space, so this is NOT the time!
š¤®š¤®š¤®
Iām sorry you have to deal with this; keep telling her no and putting the stuff back in her car.
I keep a Sharpie marker in the kitchen cupboard. Anything that goes in there gets the date it was purchased written on it. Anything that goes into the fridge gets the day it was opened written on it. And Iām not a person who is ābest before date + 1 = poisonā, but I do keep an eye on things. Itās too easy to lose them in the back of the fridge for a week or two and, after my second bad bout of food poisoning (both times from a restaurant), I am not going through it again by my own failings.
Wow, we have the same MIL. It brings me joy to throw away shits she gave. She tried to be sneaky once and cut out the expiration date on some packages but I know her so well everything went to trash. Iām no contact now so I am glad iāll never ever need eat her food.
You handled her so well! š
My husbands paternal grandmother (Oma) does this to us. She buys cheap shit on base, her husband, (not hubby’s grandfather) works on base so she has access.
It’s shit I don’t use. Like cookie mixes and jiffy muffin mixes.
If I want cookies, I’ll make it from scratch. My kids don’t eat it nor does my husband. It’s expired 90% of the time, if not by months, than at least a year. She gives us her unwanted, used kitchen utensils/cookwear like I don’t have my own.
And don’t get me stsrted on the thrifted kid’s toys. I didn’t want my daughter to have a baby doll. She never showed interest. She had tons of buddies (plushies) she didn’t need a baby doll. She’s got 2 now. One from her aunt and one from Oma. Both make cooing noises, hate it.
I think you should start putting boxes in your car let her fill the boxes with thr food. Then stop at your neighborhood grocery store dump on your way home. Get rid of every load.
I canāt imagine dealing with this 4 months PP. Good youāre telling her NO and to check in regarding the dishes. My MIL likes to get herself involved in random tasks around the house whenever she wants, not when we ask her to. She once unloaded a DIRTY dishwasher without asking me and I had to check every kitchen cabinet for what was clean and what was dirty. It had me livid. I hope it makes you feel better your MIL is not the only crazy one on the planet. However the expired food thing is.. kinda crazy. Please donāt ever let her feed any of your children š„ŗ
Omg it sounds like my MIL exactly. Are you sure we don’t have the same one?
Iāve had to deal with issues with a MILās food before. The first time was when I noticed a package of bread that had mold on it so I went to throw it away. She told me not to and that she just tears off the mold and eats the rest. I explained to her how unsafe that is and she didnāt care. This made me wonder what happens to the food she makes and brings over.
She once brought over expired cereal (one of the boxes was already opened, too) that she got from someone else.
The last time was when she stopped by unannounced to drop off a pot of beef soup that had been sitting in her car for about 7 hours in the middle of summer. We didnāt eat it and my husband threw it out as soon as she walked out the door.
We have been NC with my ILs for about 6 years.
They just contacted us out of nowhere to try and offload some of their trash onto us.
In our case it’s not hoarding, it’s that they need us to be scapegoats only good enough for their cast offs.
Not food thankfully but just nonsense. My mil shops at places like Ross and TJMax and if it is cute and cat related she buys it to give to my daughter. She got my daughter some hello kitty stuff and curious George stuff for my daughter for Christmas. My then 5 year old was not shy about making her dislike of this stuff known. She is more carful now that she realizes my daughter has no filter. My husband and I did tell my daughter it wasn’t nice to reject gifts but for me it was hard not to laugh. My mil knew full well my daughter was into Disney princess at the time so she had no excuse. My daughter is now into American Girl so we will see what mil comes up with for my daughter’s upcoming 6th birthday.
I’m concerned that as a hoarder, she is bringing nasty things to your home, like bedbugs, the occasional mouse droppings, etc.
Oh man, you are not alone in this expired food nightmare. Itās wild how some MILs treat their kids’ homes like a personal landfill annex. You told her not to bring anything, she brought it anyway. Thatās not a misunderstanding, thatās straight-up disrespect. And redoing her āhelpā with the dishes? Iād lose it too. Sheās not being helpful, sheās asserting control. Good for you for taping that crap up and sending it back. Stand firm. Mondayās coming.
I understand your pain my MIL loves to gives garbage as gifts. Itās normally crap she has picked up at discount stores and I am not saying all discount stores are bad but the ones she foes to sell stuff on the edge of their expiey. And she started shopping in bloody February and stashes it. By the time Christmas comes around or someones birthday itās normally expired. Some items have actipually gone rotten. Because she buys food products to give as gifts. Even before I went nc with her and thing she gave as went in the bin immediately.
My sisterās MIL pulls this same shit with food and with junky things she buys on sale.
She tries to bring the junk to my sisterās kids as gifts.
Her house is a hoarded up pigsty that you can barely get in the door but she refuses to admit that she has a problem. She also has multiple freezers full of food that are hopelessly out of date.
My sister is too nice to tell her no, but I throw that shit away the minute she (the MIL) leaves and I have told my sisterās children not to eat any of the food and encourage them to just throw away the junky gifts.
My own MiL is an evil demon but not a hoarder and I have been NC for years.
My sisterās MIL hates my guts because I donāt put up with her shit and she knows Iām not afraid of her.
I agree with you in your argument with her and she sounds like a nightmare. PLEASE stop using boomer as a slur and imply her actions are because she is a boomer. Yes I’m a little sensitive but come on.
But back to the problem at hand, I hope your husband backed you up on this and helps to push back on her crap.
My mother was a hoarder. I hated going back home to visit, because she would see things at garage sales she thought I might like and I would show up to have her give me several large boxes of things that I had no use for, and definitely didn’t have the room to display. Clothes that were in fairly decent shape went to donations, anything that wasn’t fit to wear for whatever reason went straight into the garbage when I got home.
I did figure out a way to get rid of all the expired food in her pantry. I would tell her I needed a ‘few food items’ and use that as an excuse to take out all of the stuff that was well past their dates, and then say ‘Let me clean up the fridge a little bit while I’m here.’
Still had a lot of stuff to toss out when she passed. But I had already gotten rid of most of the old clothes and canned goods while she was still around.
Ugggh. So in our family, my mother in law gives junk āgiftā bags for every occasion. Itās not food, thank goodness, but the old weird useless things she āgiftsā are hurtful. No one who cared about me or my family would gift literal trash to us; I would rather have nothing.
Itās been 16 years of this and I finally started just throwing random things I would normally trash into a bag for her. My husband decided to join me in no contact, though, so I never got to give it. Sheād be too oblivious even if I did.
I have no advice other than outright refusing to take expired foods or going through them and trashing them in front of her. Good luck. Itās hard with getting unwanted āgiftsā because someone will try to make you feel grateful for the bare minimum.
Oh my lmao. Reading the title I assumed maybe just barely expired dry goods. Which at smaller food pantries can be very common. That’s insane
āthis is expired, we arenāt taking itā every single time. Itās not even rude to say that. Say it directly to her each time
boomers have this WEIRD ass affliction with expired foods and saving things that donāt need saving. both my husband and i have boomer grandmas that do this and itās horrific. we visited my grammy two years ago and SHE BAGGED WET SCRAMBLED EGGS. i repeat.. scrambled eggs, she dumped the cold eggs into a ziplock bag and placed them IN THE FREEZER and said āwe can have these tomorrowā my brothers and i and husband ALL shot eyes to each other so as to say ānone of us are touching thatā. then we looked through her fridge and found 3 expired jams from pre 2020, the grape one had a white fuzzy mold growth that took up the capacity of the jar.
yesterday my husband got a call from his grandma and she said āoh by the way grandpa and i have chicken for you and (my name) for your next few dinners, so come pick that up after work tomorrow, you could still eat it this week!ā and he goes āhold on grandma when was this chicken prepared?ā she goes āyou know a few weeks back when we had you over for dinner, (when his mom blew the fuck up on us) itās been frozen so you guys can still have it!ā he literally said āgrandma no thank you. i really have no want for 3 week old chicken. MAYBE if it was beef, but even then. weāre good but thanksā
boomers genuinely think fridges and freezers make food preserved permanently itās scary.
Ugh. I’m so sorry. You’re on the right track with not letting her leave her trash in your house. Next step is not letting it get through the door in the first place.
MIL’s got some serious issues. You’re right to set boundaries and prioritize your home’s cleanliness. Taping up those expired boxes and sending them back was perfect. Don’t let her guilt trip you into tolerating her hoarding habits.
I’m sorry about the hoarding situation and sympathize heavily with not wanting a boomer to do your dishes.
But I do gotta say, six year old pasta sauce is definitely fine to eat.
āOh did you need me to throw this out for you? I got you girl!ā