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This blog is brought to you by the great cross pollination of 07. To check out my post, click on the link at the bottom. I have to admit I didn't really do it justice.

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The Curse of My Mother-In-Law's Junk
I like to have a clean house with lots of room. I do not like clutter or decorative junk. I have a few things around, so my house doesn't look "naked" but for the most part, counters are empty, tables are clear, and mantels are unadorned. My mother-in-law is the opposite. She likes her whole house to be decorated to an inch of its life. There is decorative stuff everywhere. She is also not neat or clean, so there is clutter everywhere too. She is always trying to improve me and that includes my house. When we moved in temporarily to a rented house recently, she was full of immediate plans to bring over plants and knick-knacks to fill up my nice clean space. I managed to stop her.

What I cannot stop, is her cleaning out her closet and my father-in-laws closet and giving the stuff to us. She buys tons of new clothes all the time and gives the old ones to us. My husband has more clothes than I do. Usually what I do is to take the bags that she gives us, poke through them briefly, and then give 95% of the stuff to charity. I recently told her that we were not accepting any new clothes or stuff from her. She found a loophole and is now handing my husband bags full of clothes and telling him he "left them" at her house.

My in laws have lots of money. So, usually when they give us stuff, they say things like "that is a $150 shirt." This is to make me feel guilty about giving it away. But in my opinion, if none of us want it, it is a $0 shirt.

Story: Recently my father-in-law offered us a "really expensive" pillow. I asked him why he didn't want it if it was really expensive. He told me (after I forced it out of him) that it was uncomfortable. I asked him why we would want an uncomfortable pillow. He said "but it cost $300!" I told him that it is worth nothing if it is so uncomfortable that no one wants to sleep on it. I offered to take it and throw it away for him if he were squeamish. He said no, and I bet that pillow is in a closet somewhere at their house.

I've managed to stop most of the junk coming to our house and I have stopped showing it to my husband before I get rid of it. (He learned the "but it was really expensive" from his parents.) But I will never be able to stop it completely until one of my husband's brothers gets married. Then they will be more deserving than us and hopefully I won't have to throw so much away!

If you want to see where this blog entry came from, click here. And while you are there, enter my contest!