Imagine being a kid and moving in with your grandmother. It could be a fun multi-generational living experience.

But what would you do if your grandmother started throwing your stuff away? Would you call her out on it or simply dig it out of the trash?

In this story, one family is in this situation. Talking to the grandma doesn’t make any difference, so they try another tactic to see if she’ll throw her own stuff away.

Keep reading for all the details.

Want to throw your own dishes away? Sure, go ahead.

I’ve never had a great relationship with my grandma; none of my siblings could ever stand her.

She was always domineering but didn’t have the guts to do things to our faces; always loudly complaining about us to her friends within obvious hearing distance.

When the lease on our house expired and my dad was looking for new accommodation, my grandma showed up and pretty much waved a heavy and stout umbrella in his face, insisting that we moved in with her “so she could take care of us”. (But we would still have to pay her a generous amount of rent.)

My sister and I pleaded with my dad not to, but he eventually gave in “because she’s my mother”.

She complained immediately.

We move in, and not even a month in various altercations start.

She complains that we have too much stuff.

Consider that we have what is probably twice her stuff and quadruple the people.

We stuff everything we can into this tiny storeroom, thanks to my dad’s packing skills. Those she won’t touch.

This is awful!

But little things start disappearing after; the prized porcelain dish set that my dead mom bought with my dad two decades ago, my tiny mementos that i tucked inside my drawer, out of sight…

And then we found them in the bin.

No amount of pleading, arguing, convincing could get her to stop.

The only things she wouldn’t throw away were the things she couldn’t physically lift by herself, and obviously nobody would help her.

Guess why she left the storeroom stuff alone.

The living situation doesn’t really improve.

We get pretty sick of each other.

At this point, we’ve already packed all our prized tableware away, and resolve to using only the cheap stuff that our previous landlord had given to us.

My grandma proudly loads in her mish-mash assortment of random metal plates and plastic bowls. It looks like a freaking military cookhouse set.

We’ve long learnt to keep our mouths shut and not argue, and just quietly retrieve anything she dumps into the bin and hope she doesn’t find it again. That way we at least don’t have to listen to her screaming about the house after every single time we poke holes in her logic.

This is crazy!

Literally her comeback every single time is (translated to English):

Karma will bite you in the butt! Wait until you grow up and your children don’t listen to you! If you’re so unhappy why don’t you move out? The sooner the better!

It hadn’t even been two months since she threatened my dad to make us move in.

Grandma sounds really impatient.

Various little things happened, but basically she started to find fault with all our habits, like… not washing the dishes within 5 minutes of eating.

Sometimes when you have a large meal, you just feel like leaning back in your chair and relaxing for a while, y’know?

Oh no, not for dear old grandma. Everything has to be cleared immediately.

Grandma: If you don’t wash them immediately, I’ll throw them all away!

She wasn’t joking.

She doesn’t even bother to tell anybody. No “can you go do the dishes now?” We just walk in to do the dishes later and find them in the dustbin.

We pick them out and wash them, and we’re all pretty miffed.

If we ignored her requests a dozen times and she does this; sure, we deserve such treatment. But it was the first time, and everything she did was pretty much out of sight.

She would have thrown it away if we hadn’t looked for the missing dishes.

Her brother is one smart kid!

My brother hatches a plan. We pick out her favourite dishes. Not the most expensive ones, just the ones that she uses the most often, and some of the new set that she bought.

The next meal is cooked entirely with these tableware. Down to every utensil and plate.

We finish eating, dutifully put everything into the sink, without washing them. Then we go back to the dining table, kick back, and relax.

Will she throw the dishes away? She had to think about it this time.

15 minutes later we return to the kitchen and find my grandma staring at the pile of dishes. She looks at us. She looks at the dishes. She looks at us. She picks up all the dishes and dumps them into the bin.

My brother giggles.

Go ahead. It’s all your dishes. You like to throw stuff, we’ll let you throw stuff. But don’t touch our stuff.

Half an hour later, she slinks back into the kitchen and quietly picks them all out of the trash. Guess her stuff isn’t as expendable as ours.

They never should’ve moved in with their grandmother. I know she begged them to move in, but it seems like she regretted that decision.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

One person offers a few suggestions.

They could give her a taste of her own medicine!

Here’s more advice.

There could be serious consequences.

She never should’ve begged them to move in with her.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.