First time, glad I found this site!
What follows is the rant of a step-mom, a person who wanted kids of her own but that just never happened, prefers to live in a somewhat orderly house, who pays bills & buys groceries & does a significant quantity of the housework, works full time and goes to college half time.
Am I horrible that I want the 18 year old step-daughter to make some contribution to the household? She lives rent free, buys no groceries, has her college tuition paid for, books paid for, phone paid for, car insurance paid for. She is a complete slob, almost to the point of being a horder the only difference being that she is not emotionally attached to the messes that she leaves in her wake. If she uses or touches something it gets left wherever she used it. Her room is the temperature of a sauna even when she is gone for every 3day weekend visiting her boyfriend. She seems insistent to give away all of my good tupperware, God forbid she uses the cheap stuff or the stuff that some other food came prepackaged within. Her chair in the living room has weeks of crumbs on it because she eats like a pig (not quantity of food but cleanliness of eating habit). By comparison to her prison inmate brother she is a saint, and heralded like a princess so if I say anything about anything I am the bad guy. I don't see anything wrong with expecting that she pick up after herself, lock the doors to the house when she comes and goes, turns lights OFF (OMG).
- IrishRiley's blog
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Evidently, her dad has raised
Evidently, her dad has raised her to do whatever she wants and to be inconsiderate.
I would not care about being the bad guy, she should be held responsible or move out.
What does your H say when you
What does your H say when you point out that he is crippling his daughter by not teaching her how to adult? :?
My rantings, and this website
My rantings, and this website is something that I found in an effort to save my sanity. I did rant about all the bad things about my step-daughter, that being said I don't hate her. She's a nice person, polite, has manners. Is just a complete slob and while she is a miser with her own money has no problems doing things that incur costs to other people (her sauna of a room for example).
I LOVE LOVE LOVE her father, he is the most wonderful person I have ever met. He does parent. He just doesn't see the things that I have vented about as being as much of an issue as I do. MANY MANY times over the past decade that he and I have been together I have wished that she was biologically my daughter for many many reasons. Her mother is a complete waste of human space, air, food, and any other thing that a human can consume/occupy. In compensation for this my husband goes much easier on her with regard to almost everything than he would if her mother was somewhat of a decent human being. He wants his daughter to grow up to be a well-adjusted self-sufficient contributing member of society. In that way she is becoming all those things. She has a job, a pretty good one for a person her age, goes to school and gets B's and C's.
She is the only thing that causes any strife at all between her father and I. I vent/blog so that I can get it out of my system. I know that I have some OCD tendencies, if I wasn't such a clean fanatic her slobbishness wouldn't bother me at all. As for her sauna of a room, and the tupperware things... as her father says "we can afford it."
Her behavior doesn't cause any catastrophes. However if I were to lay down an ultimatum, that I know would be met BADLY. I LOVE LOVE LOVE her father, it's not worth it.
I have asked her to clean up after herself, at least in the common areas of the house. Sometimes that works for a period of time most times it goes in one ear and out the other. Per conversations with friends who have kids, it is not at all uncommon behavior for an 18y/o.
No one is perfect, I am not, her father is not, she is not. We are all just people trying to make a life in this world. With housework/chores being the only exception I would say he is doing a good job raising his daughter. They are very much alike. I just don't mind cleaning up after him, partially because he is not nearly the slob she is, partially because he does do some cleaning around the house from time to time, mostly because he pays the majority of the bills. We negotiated the conditions on me living with him when I moved in, and revisit that negotiation from time to time. I pay a set amount each month which he adds in to his money to pay the mortgage, insurance, utilities, phones, etc. It's a good deal, for both of us. He likes the the house cleaner than he has the patience to make happen himself, and I live the lifestyle that his income affords which is beyond what my income can provide.
We just clash over what his daughter gets away with. I am not willing to sabotage this relationship over it. He doesn't see much wrong with her being a slob. At this point I am counting down until she moves out, she's a sophomore in college so I figure I have 2.5 years. He has agreed that if she continues to live with us once she graduates with her bachelor degree that we will renegotiate living terms WITH HER and that she will then have to start contributing to the household more.
Not a horrible plan honestly