Most parents love it when their kids come home from college for the summer.

Unfortunately, it appears that the daughter in this story has picked up quite an attitude about her laundry while she was gone.

Let’s see how the parents handle the situation.

AITA for ignoring our daughter’s inconvenient boundary?

My wife (39f) and I (36f) have a daughter (technically my stepdaughter but I’ve raised her since she was 5) (19f) from a previous relationship of my wife’s (her father is not in the picture) who has come back home after her first year at uni.

She’s picked up a new (and problematic) issue since she was last home for an extended period of time, surrounding laundry.

So far these all seem reasonable, and it is even good that she is being responsible for her own laundry.

Basically, she has established a “boundary” where nobody is to touch her clothes.

Her reasoning is that she’s concerned something will go missing/get damaged, thinks it’s just gross for us to go through her stuff, and is an adult who deserves privacy.

All fine, we have 3 young children in our home (9f, 9f and 2m) so plenty of washing to keep us entertained.

Well, this is going downhill fast.

The issue is that she has a habit of monopolizing washing facilities to the extent where we’re effectively prevented from being able to get any other laundry done.

For example, last weekend she put a wash in before work and hung it out on the line at around 11am.

She then left for work (12pm-10pm) – her wash was dry within an hour, and obviously she wasn’t going to be back all day.

We had a few days worth of washing to get through, so my wife (her mum) took everything off the line and folded it.

We got through 5 other loads that day.

She was not unhappy? If it were my kids, I would be upset that I had to move their laundry myself!

She was NOT happy when she got home, and said that she’d been very clear that we weren’t to touch her things.

When we explained the situation above, she said it was “first come, first served” (not something we’ve ever said) and that since the next day was due to be nice also, we should’ve just waited to get through it the next day.

That really pissed us off.

We’ve offered her a weekly laundry day, where we’ll avoid using the machines so she can have freedom to do as she pleases on that day, but she said once a week won’t cut it.

Fair enough, but there are 5 other people in the house that need clean clothes/bedding/towels.

Other than that all we can really suggest is that she keeps on top of her washing.

If she’s at home we’ll ask her to clear her clothes from the machine/dryer/washing line as needed, but like any 19 year old she has a social life/work commitments and is often busy.

I’m not sure this girl knows what boundaries are.

She’s upset because she says we’re not respecting her boundaries, whereas we’ve pointed out that while “don’t move my clothes” is objectively reasonable, it’s not fair for her to do so at the inconvenience of everyone else in our home.

Essentially the last conversation we had ended up with her in tears because we said as long as situations like Saturday keep occurring, we’ll continue to move her stuff.

Just FYI, we do fold her clothes carefully, and leave them in a basket in a communal living area so they’re kept together, in good condition, and we’re not going in and out of her room.

We normally have a good relationship with her, so this is all a bit unusual.

We’ve asked her if everything else is okay, and she says yes and seems otherwise normal in and of herself, and she’s normally reasonable.

AITAH?

The daughter is a spoiled brat and needs to appreciate that her parents are letting her do the laundry at all.

Lots of commenters are coming down hard on the daughter.

I don’t know about all kids these days, but this one sure doesn’t understand what boundaries are.

It sounds like this daughter needs to get out into the real world a bit.

The daughter can’t just say ‘Respect my boundaries’ and have no consideration for others.

You can have boundaries, but you can’t inconvenience everyone around you.

That’s just life.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.