Tags
anger, anxiety, coupons, depression, OCD
I’m so tired of trying to keep some semblance of control over my house, specifically my kitchen.
My MIL lives with us now. It’s been a year.
I feel crappy complaining about this. I know all too well that there are people out there struggling to even afford food. And if it weren’t for MIL, we would be in the same boat. I get it and I’m sorry, but I’m at the end of my teeny little rope and I’m ready to punch someone.
For a year, I have been asking her to limit the amount of junk food that she brings into the house. It’s not bad enough that the meds make me gain weight, but with temptation all around…well, it’s just more temptation than I am capable of resisting.
Beyond that is the mess of junk food and groceries that I must organize on a daily basis. I can’t help it. I can’t stand it. The mess is beyond what I am capable of handling. But, she feels that she needs to continue to bring these things into the house because my hubby likes them. Well, yes, he does, but he’s also gaining weight from the piles of crap littered around the kitchen like a junk food store. But she doesn’t care about that.
The real problem here is that she is depressed and she feels better when she shops. Sunday has been the only day for a week that the UPS driver didn’t stop here with a package for her. A run to the store for bread and salad becomes cookies, crackers, and candy that takes two trips to bring in from the car.
Never mind that I have already purchased a pile of snacks to use in hubby’s lunches. I buy on sale. I use coupons. I pay very little for a lot. It’s driven by necessity because there just isn’t much money.
MIL is supposed to pay for the addition to the house that is needed because we used the better part of our 3 bedrooms to make a large room for her to be comfortable in. We live in the bit that’s left. But she’s blowing through her money buying cookies that we don’t need. Or, quite frankly, want.
I have brought this up many many times. She ignores me. I don’t know if the desire to shop is so overwhelming that she can’t honor my wishes, or if she seriously just doesn’t give a shit.
I spend time every single day re-organizing the kitchen. I’m exhausted from the effort. Today I stood in the kitchen looking at the mess and bawled my eyes out. I didn’t feel any better when I was done. And then I tried to fix it
I have an area in the laundry room that we loosely call a pantry. This is where I keep excess items that I buy on crazy good sales and with coupons. She ignores this.
The secondary problem is that MIL wants to add her things to the decor of the house. Which is fine. But to add her table to our dinky little kitchen a couple of crappy temp cabinets that I use need to be emptied and the contents moved to the cabinet pictured above. Of course, I can’t do that if she keeps piling full of crap.
Yesterday I gave her a bit of an earful, which for me, is very hard. I have a nice severe case of co-dependency and it’s important to me that everyone like me. So getting super irritated and expressing it is weird. But strangely freeing
It didn’t change anything, except that she agreed with me that she shops to feel better. But, she doesn’t want to change. And she’s not terribly concerned about how much of pressure it puts on me.
*big sigh* I quit