A little background on this subject...after my mother-in-law (MIL) would come visit our home, I'd find myself completely annoyed beyond belief at how much of a mess she could make. Especially after I cleaned our house from top to bottom. I decided I should begin documenting just how she can tear apart a perfectly clean home to prove to my husband that I wasn't needlessly complaining about his mother. I should mention that I do think she is a perfectly nice person, but nice people make messes too. And I'm calling her out on hers. Now, I present photos of our home before and after a visit from the MIL.
Our bedroom, which despite the hideous old-lady flower vomit comforter (courtesy of the MIL), looks quite nice, no? This will likely stay nice and clean since I don't like her to come into our room.
My nice little computer nook.
My husband's computer area (to left) and beyond the 70's reject curtain from hell is our living room.
This stupid curtain is what gives us a smidge of privacy from the living room as my in-laws, in their infinite wisdom, designed this stupid wall with frosted glass panels. The wood cabinetry is pretty cool but I want WALLS (the other panel of glass does not close). Imagine trying to change or nap with annoying people on the other side of this ghastly curtain. Grrr!
Our living room and dining area.
Another view of the living room, facing toward our bedroom. You can see our happy little fish tank. Please note the decor of the world map (courtesy of my husband who just loves it for some unknown reason) and more old-lady style flower crap on the pillows (MIL!) are not my choice. I am debating throwing all those items out our window currently.
Our nice big TV (which only gets one channel in English, but my husband might get us some in Korean at least which would be a nice variety), our dry erase board (where I have written in Korean to be rebellious) and you can see the door to the kitchen (on the left) and the baby's room (on the right).
The baby's room! Still being worked on as we're waiting for a box from Singapore and I'd love it if my husband would kindly move those Chinese books from the top shelves over to the other shelves hint hint cough cough please. Thanks Honey!
A closet full of teeny tiny baby clothes! Awww!
Our one and only bathroom! For those of you who have never been to Asia, this is very typical to use the entire bathroom as a shower. The drain is on the floor between the toilet and the sink. It makes cleaning pretty easy in here. The ugly thing in the mirror is our washing machine.
Our kitchen which, when I moved here, was horrid. My MIL had vegetables all over the floors and counters and it was so dirty. My husband and I cleaned everything and organized it and this is how it tends to look when she's not here destroying it, which right now as I type this, she is, and she's making something that smells too. Stay tuned for photos of that.
See how clean everything is! Oh and sadly, she's wrecking it all right now! Gak!
There she is, my MIL making a mess in my kitchen. Note how the counter behind her is all cluttered with crap.
My counters still covered with a bunch of junk. Why can't she put things away? Also, she uses the ugly towel rod thingie to hang her big ugly and heavy purse. We have a perfectly good coat and bag rack right by the front door!
My floor! I sweep and mop each day to get this floor looking its best. Remember how nice it looked in the beginning photos?
More shit all over the floor along with smudgey footprints.
At least she is finally using the dish rack to dry the dishes before putting them back. Very creative stacking on her part here and love that she wiped the counters off in my presence but as you can see she just wiped whatever was on the counters around.
What, she couldn't clean up that little bit she spilled? COME ON!
She even got it on the window sill. I have no idea how.
She didn't even clean off the counters and put this stuff away. She just leaves it out and unorganized. The bananas indeed should stay on the counter but we have a refrigerator and cabinets for everything else. Yeesh!
No flash shot of the dirt from the kitchen floor after she left...
And with flash, a shot of the dirt courtesy of my MIL on our kitchen floor, taken after she left. Why didn't she just sweep this shit up?
A good shot of just how gunked up she left my kitchen floor.
And our living room floor, dirt shot after she left.
Since I originally posted this, I should add that my husband did kindly remove the extra books from the baby's room. Also, we changed the comforter to one that doesn't make our home look like it was designed entirely by Old Lady's Home Journal. And perhaps most comforting of all, my husband asked his mother to please not come over so early in the morning anymore (this destruction occurred after 10am on March 21st) and not to come over so often. Don't worry...I've still got more MIL stories to tell and she will sure as the sun shines drive me batshit crazy once again.
She's trying ... and sometimes VERY trying.
ReplyDeleteLaugh it off.