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Upstairs is off-limits to guests
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Anonymous
NP. So you...don't have any bedrooms, then? You and your husband sleep in the middle of the foyer, or the living room? And kids are just allowed to play on your bed and open your drawers? How very odd, not a single bedroom in your house. Enjoy your studio apartment! |
Anonymous
So you...don't know how to read? PP said they didn't have a playroom backyard or a basement. Didn't say they didn't have any bedrooms. Many many families live in 1 or 2BR apartments in the DC area. Some even live in studios. Try exiting your bubble some time. |
Anonymous
+1 We live in DC and we have plenty of apartment playdates and bedrooms are part of the play areas. And no, the kids aren't allowed to open drawers. Parent your children better if that's the kind of behavior they're capable of. |
Anonymous
Exactly this. |
Anonymous
I've lived in an apartment, a townhouse and a modest single family home in the DC area. I have never entertained house guests in my bedroom. I have never told children to play on my bed. I would probably opt to play at a public playground and eat at a picnic table if playing on my bed and hanging out in the master bathroom was my only other option. |
Anonymous
+1000 |
Anonymous
+1 Entering a bedroom is not equal to snooping through someone's drawers. Sorry you've had bad experiences with your guests. |
Anonymous
| I agree, upstairs is off limits to guests unless explicitly invited. However, if any head upstairs for whatever reason it is certainly not a big deal! I don't assume they are rifling through our drawers or closets. We always make it a point to ensure upstairs is in tidy and showing condition when we have guests over or lock our bedroom during playdates we host for our kids' friends. My sister in law and brother in law's house is incredibly tiny and when we come over, my kids (4 and 5.5) always try to go up to their cousins bedrooms where all the toys are and the in laws freak out. I had to get the little one back downstairs one time and was beyond shocked to see the horrible mess in their hallway, the kids bedrooms, and their bedroom (all doors were open and face into the hallway). Piles and piles of laundry, toys, papers, horrendous messes. I'm especially mindful to block my kids before they go up there and really drilling home that they listen to their aunt and uncle when they say don't go upstairs, but it still makes me sad to think of my teenage niece and nephew living in this mess, in fear that friends will go upstairs, and getting used to it. Just my two cents. It's OK to keep guests out of your upstairs but if you're hiding something odds are they will find it for sure. |
Anonymous
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NP. For the "every space is a public space is MY house" people - serious question, what harm is there in ASKING when you are in someone else's house, before assuming that their whole house is open as yours is? Maybe it is and they will say go right ahead, and maybe it isn't and they'll direct you somewhere else. But there IS potential harm in barging ahead without asking - you could come across sensitive financial papers the host was working on in their private office, a large pile of dirty laundry or unmentionables in the main sleeping space, or delicate and expensive equipment in a craft or work room - because the host didn't expect their private spaces to be made public for a party. Or just more generally piss your host off because they weren't prepared for guests in that area of the house!
And this goes for houses of any size - if I visited someone in a studio apartment who had a partition screen blocking a corner of their room, I'd *never* peek behind the screen without asking first and with good reason. ("I need to change my shirt and the bathroom is occupied" is a good reason. "I'm curious" is not.) *Everyone* has a right to some private space, and you need to let each host define that for themselves - and the only way you'll know is if you ASK FIRST. You even acknowledge this when you say kids don't open drawers on playdates - so your drawers are your private space. Some people need to block off whole rooms. How hard is this to understand? This has been a long running point of contention with my mother in law. She is an extrovert and a neat freak, and lived for 40 years in a single floor ranch where the master bedroom opened directly onto the family room. Their bedroom door was always wide open and I *still* asked every time before I went in. She always looked at me a little puzzled but said "sure" every time, and no further harm came. OTOH, I'm an extreme introvert, an admitted slob, and fiercely private. My bedroom is my SANCTUARY. I need one space where I can relax and not have to be "on" all the time. My kids are not even allowed in if my DH or I isn't there (much less my own mother - since I'm sure someone will say I'm discriminating against my MIL). It's not about *her* at all, and yet it took many many conversations before she finally stopped going in uninvited, and I know she still feels hurt by it. FWIW, we threw a large party recently, and I decided not to leave it up to chance - I locked all the bedroom doors, leaving open only the upstairs kids/hall bathroom (which folks were welcome to use if the other two were not convenient). I even proactively offered a bedroom to the one nursing mom who came (but she declined). I'm sad that I have to do this, but based on this thread alone, I'm glad I did. |
Anonymous
1) For me, family is family. We don't need to ask to enter a room, and I love and trust my family and would never worry about them snooping or damaging things. If they need to get a pencil from my desk or use my bathroom because the ground floor one is occupied, they don't need to ask and I too would be puzzled if a family member asked if they could enter a room. The answer is always yes. If you're having houseguests over that you don't trust, I would question why. Clearly you have more needs in terms of boundaries as an extreme introvert, but other people are different and I wonder why you can't recognize that. 2) Lots of people don't have the luxury of confining their house guests to a specific area of the house because their living areas are small. So it becomes ridiculous in a 2BR home to confine a guest to a certain living area. 3) When you have big parties, it's impossible to limit guests to the ground floor unless your ground floor is palatial with multiple bathrooms. So why not clean up your home and make your house a welcoming place. |
Anonymous
Trespassing is not necessarily the same thing as breaking and entering. It is still wrong, though. Sorry your guests don't know better! |
Anonymous
Trespassing is a legal definition. Wouldn't be valid for someone you invited to your home. You need to make a better class of friends if you need to have the police involved when you have guests. |
Anonymous
Your young children have no business going into their teenage cousins' rooms anyway. I would never have allowed mine to do that. It's terrible that you allowed your kids to wander their home. That's 100% on you. |
Anonymous
Just because you are okay with it, doesn't mean the answer is always yes, even for people in your family. You do realize people have different feelings than you, don't you? Or do you really believe everyone in your faaaamilllyyy is an entension of you, which would make you an extreme narcissist. |
Anonymous
Lol, what an ironic statement. |