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[quote=Anonymous]Ae you my SIL? I'd guess yes except my MIL ships the stuff.

It's hard. Tried a hundred times to be light and nice about it. Finally said that gifts arriving to the house would be donated, and that if she kept bringing hundreds of gifts with each visit, we'd start limiting her visits. I'm sure I'll be called awful but MIL went beyond spoiling - it was almost a mental illness. She bought several thousand gifts / toys for my children a year. She's wealthy and was almost encouraging my kids to treat things as disposable - when DS remarked that we don't have any room for new gifts, all on his own, MIL told him he could throw away anything older than a month and she'd buy new. DH told her several times to ease up, with no reduction in the gifts, so I had to drop the hammer.

FWIW, I do like her, but our relationship suffered when I put my foot down. Unfortunately, it was VERY necessary. It was becoming a real problem for me, kids sad that the dozens of gifts that would arrive each week would be donated, me annoyed at making a good will run literally once a week, plus setting me up to be the bad guy. As it is, we can barely walk through the house due to the gifts we already have kept. I don't regret putting an end to it one bit. She still sends packages from time to time - we allow one small gift per in-person visit and one package a month. It still feels like WAY too much, but that's the compromise that allowed us to retain some relationship with them.

Oddly enough, FIL is a minimalist - he has very few "things" and repairs rather than replaces, etc. But MIL buys enough for 50 people...[/quote]

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