When does a house become a home?

Is it merely by being where you stay for long enough, or does it need to hit a certain level of quality?

That’s a question at the core of this story where one woman is upset about the state of her childhood home.

Let’s see why she’s so upset.

AITA for showing resentment towards my siblings because our mum fixed the house up after I moved out?

I (21f) have a complicated relationship with my family, especially my mum.

We moved to our new house when I was 14/almost 15 and it’s only now being ‘properly’ done-up.

Here’s an itemized breakdown.

What I mean by that is:

1- our main bathroom is finally being renovated (previously it was functional but no tiles, paint, etc. It had been completely stripped)

2- ALL the carpet in the house has been replaced

3- the kitchen is having it’s final touches (painted, shelves installed, hinges being replaced, etc)

Her siblings are taking their chores seriously too.

My siblings also all switched rooms which came with full makeovers.

And they’re taking the cleanliness of the house seriously.

My brother actually cleans the bathroom on the top floor despite it being his chore since we moved in.

I’m no cat expert, but I do have cats, and I can tell you you’d have a lot fewer “behavioral issues” if you got them fixed.

For context, when I was living at home, I insisted on walking outside of my room with slippers because there was always some weird liquid or goop on the carpet from my sister playing, or cat pee in the hallways because my mum refused to get our cats spayed and they didn’t have their own food/water bowls until I moved out at 18

(we had one litter box on the top floor but the cats were having some behavioral issues and would fight when they saw each other so one cat ‘took over’ the top floor and the other would just do his business downstairs in the back hallway).

The house was dirty, and despite my mum constantly cleaning, she never actually addressed any of the core issues.

But now she is.

And here’s where the resentment comes into play:

The house looks (and smells) 10x better.

And my mum has implemented a ton of stuff to help keep the house clean

However, I’m feeling a lot of resentment because my siblings get a properly furnished/decorated, clean home whereas I got a broken down one that smelt of cat and dog pee.

And I’m aware that my siblings also grew up in the same broken down home as me, but they now get to reap the benefits of this new home.

I am also the eldest and was responsible for a lot of the chores by default while they would openly refuse to help out.

The horrible state of the house was why I never moved back home after uni.

It made for some kinda unhappy holidays.

A few days ago, I arrived home for Christmas and my mum was going through the rules for the house to keep it clean.

I made a comment about if my brother actually does his chores now and my mum says ‘yes of course he does! He’s been a great help and he takes his cleanliness seriously!’

Something about this really [made me angry] because my brother would literally mock me until I was crying because I would get upset that he would refuse to clean the bathroom or hoover.

And now feelings are hurt.

I think I shut off after that because my mum asked me what was wrong and I said ‘I don’t know… I guess I feel weird because the house actually feels like a home now’.

We talked a bit about it and later, I heard my mum crying in her room talking to her friend about what I said.

Money was never an issue with renovations, btw.

AITA?

It sounds like she’s jealous and wishes things had changed years ago, but you can’t change the past.

Let’s check in with the comments on Reddit:

This person doesn’t think she did anything wrong.

One commenter refers to this as “burnt pancake syndrome:”

You can have resentment and not allow it to corrode everything:

What was this about really?

I hope they can work this out.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.