Hellobee Boards

@yellowbeach: I think this is one of those things where you have your husband handle it and just be honest but kind that you don't have the space for anything else, but the sentiment is appreciated.

@yellowbeach: would she jump on board with "experience gifts" for her? Like have your husband tell her "ma, were running out of room for the people in the house, slow your roll" then tell her about some things your daughter wants to/would enjoy to do, but you guys might not have it in the scheduled to do. Salon day, zoo, trampoline park, aquarium, children's museum, I don't know. 🤷‍♀️

My son's great grandma is like this, albeit she only visits/we visit 4-6 times a year due to the distance. I always tell her just because you're seeing Sam doesn't mean he has to get a present. Yeah, she brushes it off often, but this last time they went to the Dallas Zoo, he got one small thing from the gift shop, and that was it. They also went to a ceramics studio where he got to paint like 3 things. Did she spend as much as she usually does? Probably. But I only have a small helicopter and some cute ceramics hand painted by my toddler in the house.

I don't have much advice, but definitely can commiserate! My mother in law is very similar, right down to the borderline hoarder situation. It's really hard, on so many fronts. We get a lot of toys, and a ton of clothes on a regular basis. The clothes are easy to turn around and donate what we don't need, but it's trickier if the kids see the toys come in first. I usually try to put any bags she brings in another room before my girls see them, so I have a chance to sort through them before they know what's there. Typically, I'll suggest she grabs one or two things to play with "to get started" and then I scoot the bag away. And we donate stuff about every couple of months.

We keep boxes for donations set up in our guest room and once they're full, my husband makes regular trips to donate them and we empty the boxes to start again. If there's something "special" that my mother in law brings or something the kids really love, we certainly keep that stuff around. But a lot is used and missing pieces, or was "such a good deal she couldn't pass it up." In those cases, we sometimes feel like we're another spill-over outlet for her collecting/hoarding and that's hard.

We have gotten to a slightly better place with it at this stage, but it was because she showed up with giant boxes of stuff a couple days after I was home from the hospital with my second daughter. When I answered the door and saw her with the boxes, I burst into tears and ran upstairs, yelling something crazy to my husband about how he needed to "get rid of all the stuff right now!" It wasn't one of my finer moments, but he did have a conversation about how we appreciate her generosity but we needed a few months "off" of large scale stuff at that point in time because we couldn't handle so much coming into the house right then. She scaled back for a while, and though it did eventually ramp back up, it wasn't to the same extent it once had been.

I'll be following along for other suggestions here!!

This is my mother. It's become a real problem lately, I am not sure why. I think it's because DS1 is 4 so he's at a very fun age to buy for. I am very anti-clutter and my parents know I don't like a lot of "stuff" but they are both hobbyists and collectors and my brother is a borderline hoarder so I think that they think my aversion to things is weird. She used to be more restrained but now she has a new toy every time she seems him (weekly). She also feels bad if she buys DS1 something so now she gets DS2 something also and he's only 17 months. Ugh. A fair amount of the toys stay at her house, which was fine at first but now I have no idea how much stuff he's actually getting and that kind of bothers me. He doesn't need a new toy every time he goes over there and she's buying him playmobil and hotwheels sets, not little things. The whole thing makes me upset but my mom has no self esteem and I know if I ask her to stop she will just take it personally and see it as a criticism.

Basically we've started donating a lot of the stuff that she gives us. I also belong to a "buy nothing" type of group on facebook so I give a lot of stuff away to people in our community. The other day she was here and DS1 told me they were taking a walk to CVS so I said that was fine and asked him why and she said "grandma is going to buy me a toy there" so I waited til she was in the room and I told him that he just had a birthday so he wasn't going to get a toy today because he had a LOT of new ones, and he didn't need and new toys anytime soon. I guess it might have been a little passive aggressive, but she got the point at least for now. DS wasn't upset either.

I guess it's just a grandparent thing but man, kids do NOT need tons of toys. DS spent an hour the other day just squirting water out of dollar store squirt bottles and using food coloring to dye the water and mix colors. He never plays with one toy that long.

My husband's aunt and her family are like that. It's not good. The kids have a solid association in their mind by now that if one of them comes, they bring gifts. I'm not saying they don't like these relatives just for their own sake, but they're so used to the gifts that if we ever got a gift-free visit, I think the kids' first reaction would be surprise and disappointment

Naturally we've asked them to stop lots of times. Especially this year, because they're looking at some financial uncertainty. They don't listen, although I may have finally gotten through to the aunt recently. She came to visit the week before DD1's birthday, and when she went to sit down in a chair, I had to pull five toys off of it first. So I told her: look, we have toys on the chairs, toys on the tables, toys in the closets, toys on the floor... trust me, when you bring more toys that just means the kids get hassled more about tidying up. Maybe it's coincidence, but for the actual birthday party the aunt only brought one small present. Everyone else though....

One of my friend’s MILs was doing this and now just brings a bag of toys with her and takes it home. So each visit their daughter is excited to play with Grandma’s toys, they are always new and exciting, and she doesn’t have to actually buy new stuff each time but can if she wants.

I am a child of a hoarder and first of all, highly recommend the Children of Hoarders website; secondly it is helpful to recognize that hoarding is often related to mental illness, usually anxiety. But also, one thing they push is that it’s not okay for your parents to store their stuff at your house and that if a gift comes with conditions, it’s not a gift. So anything she wants back, hand back right then.

Ugh, have definitely dealt with this with MIL and the sheer volume of stuff drives me crazy, but even more so, now that especially LO1 is getting older (7) they are becoming bratty/entitled surrounding her visits. First question is always "did you bring us a present?" and even on a present-giving occasion there's a "what else" attitude and less gratitude since she brings SO MUCH. Literally, probably a dozen items for her 7th bday last month. I can deal with the volume of stuff and just purge/donate regularly, but with the attitude I need to deal with it somehow. But I know MIL will be so sensitive/offended if bring it up, ugh.