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[quote=Anonymous]I have a mother who also has boundary issues. My mother is very neat, organized and tidy and doesn't keep anything that doesn't have a specific function for her at that time.

I am pretty much the opposite. Maybe because so much of my stuff was given away throughout my childhood without me knowing. My mother was both nosy and determined that I wouldn't have clutter so she routinely went through everything in my room and did as she wished it with (throw out, give away, tidy up). As a teen, this drove me mad and I ended up doing two things - one hiding things in very secretive places and making my room such a mess that it drove her mad and as soon as she would clean it, I would just make it a chaotic mess.

As an adult I moved home for a bit in my twenties and after I left, I left a couple boxes of my stuff in their basement temporarily as I had almost no storage. This was my wrong decision as I know my mother and should have rented a storage unit. She went though my boxes and threw out things. In addition, I had a smaller box of really personal letters and notes from people over the years (friends, love notes, notes from a stalker that I had kept). She took all my letters and notes, cut them in to pieces and scrapbooked them and then gave the album to me as a gift for my birthday! Opening that gift was probably one of the most shocked moments of my life!

Anyways, when she comes to my house, we have actually had very direct conversations about what she is allowed to touch and not touch and what room she can go into and not go into. She gets very hurt by these conversations but I want to be sure the boundaries are explicitly clear. Once she stayed with me for a couple days and while I was at work, she went through the whole house (including the bedrooms) and picked up all the clothes and did all our laundry. For some people, this would be great, for me this led to her not being allowed in my house for almost two years unless I was home as it broke all trust for me given our history. She still doesn't understand why I was so mad but the good outcome was that fro a couple years after that she would exaggerates her requests to touch anything or go in any room. She will say is it okay if I use your bathroom or can I get a glass of water. I would just tell her yes even though I know what she desperately wanted was for me to say, you don't need to ask me that! Eventually it settled into a happy medium. She is pretty careful now and we haven't had an incident in 7 years.

So I can see Ops view if there is sufficient history. I am still fine with my mother cleaning my kitchen or tidying up the living room but we have had very explicit conversations about what rooms she can be in while in my house and what tasks she can take on.[/quote]

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