WOW, does anyone else have an anal MIL?

[maslex]

First off, the woman has two grown children (my DH and his sister) they both live out of the house. MIL has just recently (over the spring/summer) built a MIL apartment onto our house (with her husband-the kids stepfather). So now I have seen and heard things that I probably never would have if she still lived 10 minutes away. I could sit here ALL YEAR and tell you the stories but I'll just limit it to just this one. LOL

As long as I've known her she has been very meticulous on her house-keeping (which is fine, I mean who doesn't love a clean house everyday) BUT she is FANATIC about.....she has been nicknamed "Steryl Cheryl" I mean NOTHING can be out of place, NOTHING. DID YOU HEAR ME LOUD AND CLEAR.......N O T H I N G ! ! ! ! !

She is now retired and complains about not having any money and how she'll have to learn to "Live like paupers, you know like how you and Paul do" Meaning me and my DH---HER EXACT WORDS. But yet, UPS and FEDEX have not stopped showing up at my house 3-4 times a week with boxes upon boxes of stuff that they have bought. And things that she buys is NOT cheap, she's the type that has to tell you the price of everything she buys. Yesterday she came home with a wooden chest (that cost $175) just so I can take my shoes out of the plastic bin that is in the garage that we put our shoes in and put it in the chest.....because she said that the plastic bin looks to messy in her garage and this way she wouldn't have to see the shoes just laying in the bin. Whatever.

But anyways, I asked her the other day if she wraps her Christmas gifts and puts them under tree now or waits until Christmas Eve. I was basically just making conversation with her since I know she's always had the gifts out as she wraps them, but there was nothing else to talk about so I thought I'd just ask. Anyways, she says......"oh no, the gifts are out of sight in the basement. I'm am NOT going to put them under the tree at all, I don't need the clutter in my house" Since when are Christmas gifts CLUTTER??? She said that Christmas morning she will have her husband go in their basement and bring up the Christmas gifts and bring them over to our house so she doesn't have to look at them under her tree or deal with the mess of wrapping paper at her house. W T H ????

Have any of you ever heard of such a thing? Like I said earlier, I could go on and on but I'll save you the gory details.

 

[maelstrom]

She sounds like my mother.

 

[powellrj]

Truthfully, she sounds like my mom. Growing up she never allowed us to leave anything out. We couldn't lay on the couch or use the couch pillows.

She only wants a few gifts under the tree so it looks "uniform". I have gifts spewing from under the tree, behind chairs, surrounding the wood stove. You could honestly take a picture of her house or tree at any given time. My house, not so much, but if you give us a heads up, we can pull it together in about 20 minutes!

She will bring things over to my house because hers is just too full. I will look around and say are you kidding me, and take whatever she is offering and store it for her.

I keep a full pantry because growing up we never had the right food in the house. I know at Thanksgiving she wanted to make a pie, but when she went to make it realized that she didn't have any pecans or brown sugar so pecan was out, no pumpkin so pumpkin was out. She did find a can of evaporated milk, but only one can, so we had a 1/2 full sugar cream pie!! I had pumpkin, pecans and 3 different kinds of brown sugar (light, dark and splenda) at my house. I could have baked a mountian of pies and my oven doesn't even work!!!

As annoying as she is, I just mark it up to a quirk and let it go.

 

[Pixiedust34]

She sounds like my mother, too. Everything in my parents' house is picture-perfect at all times. Do you ever watch Monk? He'd feel right at home in their house. : )

The neat freak gene must have skipped a generation because I don't have it.

 

[DisneyAndRedSox]

An old co-worker of mine has a mother that:

you must switch to slippers upon entering the house- all white carpets
when switching on a light switch, must use elbow so not to get the switch dirty. have to alternate walking up different sides of the stairs not to wear out the carpet. The funny thing is my former co-worker was very disorganized, always late to meetings, extreme laid back type of person!
I wish I remembed the rest of her stories, there were some doozies! Her son used to be terrified to visit her house!

I have the opposite problem, my MIL is a ditzy ding-bat and to top it off very immature and childish. She lives 15 minutes away and after 5 years still gets lost driving to my house. How hard is "at the end of your street turn left. At the end of that street turn left. At the blinking light, turn right exactly .75 miles after." She thinks I am the crazy person and if she ever needs to move in with one of her kids, she would probably choose living in a cardboard box than living in the same house as me!

 

[DMickey28]

My MIL is not that bad but she is a clean/neat freak. When you take off a t-shirt to take a shower or get dressed the shirt is practically wash, dried, folded and put away before you get the next shirt on.

She had three boys, was a single mom for the second 1/2 of DH's life and worked two jobs. The house was still PERFECT. The boys had everything they needed, clothes where always washed and put away the day after or evening after they wore it, house stocked with anything you could imagine for food and she left dinner (granted not that great) in the oven each night. Try living up to that with your DH? I am a SAHM, a decent housekeeper but I can't get the house in that sort of order and no way in heck are your socks going to be washed/dried and put in your drawer by the next AM. I like to sleep.

 

[Jennasis]

We were out at dinner the other night, sitting at a booth. DH is across from his mom and she starts freaking out because his bowl, that he was eating from, was not centered in front of him. She honestly could not stand the fact that the bowl was two or three inches to the left of center.

On Thanksgiving she yelled at DH for putting a glass down on the kitchen table because QUOTE "she just wiped the table down"....it was a glass table. She told him he'd have to hold his glass all day.

Also, you can't put trash in her garbage if she's just changed the trash bag...

Can't rinse out a dish if she's just wiped down the sink...

 

[Helene]

Have any of you ever heard of such a thing? Like I said earlier, I could go on and on but I'll save you the gory details.
__________________
Yes.....it's called OCD (Obsessive Compulsive D/O). Be happy you do not have to live with it full-time. It must be fun for your father-in-law

 

[1stluvispooh]

The live like paupers and still shops sounds like my mom except she shops for herself. She actually asked for clothes for Christmas and she has 3 count them 3 closets stuffed with clothes and 2 dressers!

 

[ukwildcat]

These are all forms of OCD. And there's not really a clear line as to when a quirk turns into an obsession.

 

[Goofycampers]

She sounds like she is OCD.

 

[manning]

These are all forms of OCD. And there's not really a clear line as to when a quirk turns into an obsession.

My aunt is like that and is a control freak.

 

[golfgal]

My MIL is not that bad but she is a clean/neat freak. When you take off a t-shirt to take a shower or get dressed the shirt is practically wash, dried, folded and put away before you get the next shirt on.

She had three boys, was a single mom for the second 1/2 of DH's life and worked two jobs. The house was still PERFECT. The boys had everything they needed, clothes where always washed and put away the day after or evening after they wore it, house stocked with anything you could imagine for food and she left dinner (granted not that great) in the oven each night. Try living up to that with your DH? I am a SAHM, a decent housekeeper but I can't get the house in that sort of order and no way in heck are your socks going to be washed/dried and put in your drawer by the next AM. I like to sleep.

Sure you could if you did nothing else but cooked and cleaned all day .

DH would occasionally bring up how much cleaner their house was growing up when I was a SAHM still. Dh's idea of clean is nothing out of place--you could have 5" of dust all over everything and everything put away and that was "clean" vs having everything CLEAN and the newspaper out-that was dirty . I would then remind him that his mother never left the house for 15 years either (other than to grocery shop)

When we were growing up kids were running out the door to play by 9:00 am, would show up to eat lunch, then back out to play, show up to eat dinner, back out to play, home for bed at 9:00PM. If you played little league you rode your bike--there was no such thing as "carpool" because you rode your bike. The only parents that were ever at our softball/baseball games were the ones that came in from the country and had to drive their kids in or the occasional grandparent visiting from out of town. Now if you don't go to every single activity your child is in you get a call from Child Protective services for neglect

 

[MIGrandma]

First of all, here's a . I think you're probably going to need lots of them, and patience. Yeah, lots and lots of patience.

My first question is why on earth did you allow your MIL to build an in-law apartment on the side of your house? If she only lived 10 minutes away, wasn't that close enough?!

Her housekeeping sounds like my husband's step-mother. Everything is in its place at all times, not a speck of dust anywhere, the bathroom towels are hung perfectly straight (I hate to even use the bathroom if I'm over there!), etc. It's just not very comfortable to go over there to visit.

I don't get how your MIL thinks Christmas gifts under a tree are "clutter." That's kind of sad, really.

Feel free to share more MIL stories though!!

 

[golfgal]

First of all, here's a . I think you're probably going to need lots of them, and patience. Yeah, lots and lots of patience.

My first question is why on earth did you allow your MIL to build an in-law apartment on the side of your house? If she only lived 10 minutes away, wasn't that close enough?!

Her housekeeping sounds like my husband's step-mother. Everything is in its place at all times, not a speck of dust anywhere, the bathroom towels are hung perfectly straight (I hate to even use the bathroom if I'm over there!), etc. It's just not very comfortable to go over there to visit.

I don't get how your MIL thinks Christmas gifts under a tree are "clutter." That's kind of sad, really.

Feel free to share more MIL stories though!!

Me being me would have to go out of my way to have to move things just to mess with their heads.

 

[lovetoscrap]

And things that she buys is NOT cheap, she's the type that has to tell you the price of everything she buys. Yesterday she came home with a wooden chest (that cost $175) just so I can take my shoes out of the plastic bin that is in the garage that we put our shoes in and put it in the chest.....because she said that the plastic bin looks to messy in her garage and this way she wouldn't have to see the shoes just laying in the bin. Whatever.

:

This is the part that got me. You said she built an apartment--did you then GIVE her the garage???? It sounds like she may start taking over-- LOCK YOUR DOORS!

 

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

WHEW!!!

read the thread title and though that the DIS was going in yet another direction!!

 

[OceanAnnie]

I haven't heard of anyone like that. That's a little nutsy in my book. I'd like some more stories!

 

[ogreenlee]

i just want to say that i hate the word "anal", and to use it in a sentence with MIL makes me wanna hurl.

 

[princesshannahsmom]

Yeah, that sounds A LOT like my grandmother. I lived with her growing up and it was pure torcher(sp?). There was NEVER clutter, clothes were washed, dried, ironed, folded and put away before I had time to take them off! The pantry was always full, but perfect(meaning boxed lined up by size, cans lined up according to ingredients, you name it). She never sat down, EVER. I swear, she would be at a family gathering and carrying on a heated discussion and still be cleaning. It was crazy!

I always said I would never be that way, but it was ingrained in my brain I guess, because I WAS just like her. When DH and I first got married, my pantry looked just like grandmas. DH never had to ask where anything was, because everything had its place. This went on for years, until one day, I looked at DH and DD, who was 6 at the time and realized, I didn't know them. I spend so much time cleaning and organizing that I missed SO much. I don't do that anymore. Is my house clean, by grandmas standards, no way. But it isn't a pigsty, and I am okay with that.

It really is an OCD issue with folks like that, my grandma still keeps a spotless house at age 78, and I guarantee she always will.....she can't help it!