It’s not unusual or unfair for parents to instill cleanliness in their kids.
It is, however, a problem to take it to the extreme.
This daughter took to Reddit to share her story.
This happened a few years ago now when I was 16 and still living at home.
My mother (then 65) was and still is a raging narcissist and a control freak. In a way i can’t really blame her since she grew up practically looking after her siblings but it’s something that’s slowly destroyed our family life.
I was diagnosed with high level ADHD when I was 18 which explained a lot of difficulties growing up.
The girl’s mother has major issues letting go of little things.
My mother had this hatred for things not being done her way.
To the point she would go through her friends/families TRASH to rip up post and stuff with names on because people will find your address if they look through the bins.
If they’re looking through my bins they’re already outside my house so I don’t think they need my address.
The mother’s issues caused a of stress.
But she would move everything of mine, ‘put it away’ in places it doesn’t live, shove it in bags, goes into my room to try to tidy it away and I lose things, break things, don’t have enough clothes out etc.
It was endless and I was growing angry.
The girl felt helpless and alone.
My father is a enabler so would always defend her even when he knew she was wrong.
What tipped the scale was a seemingly normal day.
She couldn’t even eat in peace.
When I cook, I usually clean a little as I go along but do the bulk after I finished eating.
Every single time, without fail, as soon as my butt touched the chair to eat she’d be in the kitchen screaming about how it’s so dirty and no one does anything in this house and then there’s be smashing pot sounds and noises of anger.
We’ve all gotten used to just tuning her out mostly.
The girl follows a normal routine.
When I take a shower I always dry myself, head up to my room (telling them the bathrooms free but not clean) and then get into new clothes, quickly blow dry my hair and moisturise my face and then head down to clean up the bathroom.
But it’s never enough for the mother…
Without fail, my mom starts screaming and shouting.
She compares herself to a slave, saying no one respects her house etc etc.
Every single time.
She wouldn’t even need the bathroom. She’d just enter it to complain.
This time however she brandished my shampoo bottle in my face and screamed about how if I didn’t put things away fast enough (I was in my room maybe 10 mins) then she’d kick me out because she was fed up with tidying everyone else’s stuff up.
Cue malicious compliance.
For 4 long weeks I put everything away. And I mean EVERYTHING.
The daughter became her mother.
Everyone else’s stuff got put away or put on their place mat.
I moved things around to their proper places, I put things away when she was mid using it: work stuff she left lying around got put back into her pile of papers, her clothes dumped outside her room, blankets folded and stacked when she went to the toilet, spices and foods back on the top shelves, bottles, jewellery, glasses, pots, pans.
EVERYTHING was put away.
She enjoyed her route of revenge.
For some reason I loved it. It seemed to scratch an itch in my brain whenever I got bursts of motivation to do it.
It took a month before she basically told me to eff off doing it.
She’d lost multiple things, kept having to call for help reaching stuff, sort through her papers and ask me where I moved things.
All I said to her was ‘do u see how annoying it is now’ and closed my bedroom door.
I moved everything back the next day when she was at work and for maybe 1 blissful week she stopped nagging.
Didn’t last long but I always remember it with a smile.
Reddit users shared similar stories with their own mothers.
One person joked if there’s a handbook on this behavior.
Another reader felt nauseous at the familiarity the story brought her.
This person asked if the other really went all out.
Hopefully mommy dearest learned her lesson, but I’m not confident.
Either way what a great 4 weeks of revenge!
If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.