What to do when your family is being ungrateful suckwads
ZOEY: Mom, this car is super messy. You should clean it.
ME: Excuse me?
Let’s just say she’s lucky she‘s lucky I didn’t make her lick it clean because I was tempted to. Anyways, this is the story of my life. My family hardly ever notices anything I do for them and then when I don’t do it good enough, they’re like WTF Mom? I mean no, they’re not total a-holes, but OMG, sometimes they are so ungrateful it kills me.
ZOEY: What’s for dinner? Ewwww, chicken.
HOLDEN: But I didn’t want that kind of birthday cake!
HUBBY: So you haven’t washed it yet?
Agghhhhhh!!! Don’t they know ALLLL the shit I do around here? And I’m not just talking about cooking and cleaning. There’s like a crapload of other stuff I do “behind the scenes” that they have no idea about. Like RSVPing for birthday parties. And buying gifts. And signing up for parent-teacher conferences. And filling out school forms. And setting up play dates. And figuring out after-school activity schedules. And arranging carpools. And buying toilet paper before we run out. Etc etc etc etc etc. There really aren’t enough Etc’s in the world.
Part of me feels like making a lonnnnng list of all the shit I do so maybe they’d be like an eensy weensy bit more grateful, but the truth is they’d probably look at it and be like, “Wow, now can you take us to the park?”
So anyways, call me immature, but I’ve figured out some awesome passive-aggressive ways to get them back when they’re acting a-holey. Vengeance will be mine!!! Not really and most of this stuff will go completely unnoticed or it’ll backfire, but whatever, it’ll make me feel better for a few seconds.
Here goes. A bunch of ways to passive-aggressively get your family back for being ungrateful suckwads:
Passive-aggressive laundry
That’s totally weird, Zoey. I have no idea why all your leggings are back in your drawer inside out with the underwear still attached exactly the way you put them in the hamper. It’s a big mystery.
Passive-aggressive phone calls
Shoot, I can’t find my phone. I wonder if it’s in the living room where everyone’s watching TV. I’ll just call it over and over and over again from the landline to see.
Passive-aggressive bed-making
(in bed that night) Mmmmmm, my side of the bed is so cozy. How’s yours, honey?
Passive-aggressive DVRing
GASP, whatta you mean the DVR only recorded half of every Paw Patrol episode this week?!! Guess we’ll never find out whether the walrus gets saved. Or the turtles. Or the baby kittens.
Passive-aggressive arts and crafts
ZOEY: Wahhhh!!!! Someone put the green cap on the brown marker so I accidentally colored the grass brown!!!
ME: Bummer, I wonder who put all the caps back on the markers like that.
Passive-aggressive driving
Oh screech I’m sorry screech I don’t screech know why I keep screech slamming on screech the car brake screech. Annoying screech, isn’t it?
Passive-aggressive cooking
Dear Family,
I’m going out with the girls. Dinner’s on the stove!
Love, Mommy
Bon appetit!! After you cook it. Muhahahahahahahahaaaaaa!
That’s it. Well, until they act like suckwads again next week and I have to come up with more ways. If you liked this, please don’t forget to press the like and share buttons!
And of course if you have a passive-aggressive way you like to get your family back, by all means please share your brilliance with the rest of us so we can apply your evil ways to our own families.
I’ve been tempted to just stop. Stop putting things away, stop recycling stuff, stop making dinner, stop making lunches, stop doing laundry, stop making plans for fun things for us to do, stop reading blogs on ways to be a better mom and person, stop working so d**n hard.
It doesn’t work….. I stopped washing dishes and they just stayed there….. Ugh!
I tried that…they all celebrated mommy getting off their butts about being tidy and helpful!!! Ugh!
You must be spying on me! We gave my daughter’s friend a ride after school (4 years old), and my daughter goes on and on telling her friend how DIRTY Mommy’s car was, and how clean DADDY’s car was! Of course, Mommy drops them off and picks them up, and they throw a giant tantrum if I don’t let them eat snacks in the car… did I mention the sand from the sandbox? The paw prints on the leather seats? You are awesome… thanks for sharing the real world… I love the leggings idea… 😛 Poor thing… I can’t do it 🙂
I eat and buy snacks that only I like. That way I might have a chance at eating something during the day.
I do that too, or I hide them!!
I laughed so hard! Thanks. Mine goes to my partner. He always turns his socks inside out when he takes them off. I got sick of it and mentioned he could pull them off from the toe. He said I sounded like his ex wife. Now he receives them inside out (still) and unmatched.
Hahahahaha this is GREAT!!! My husband is a commercial plumber so he has nasty stinky socks from working construction. Who, in their right mind, wants to stick their hand inside those nasty things to turn them the right way?! I sure as heck don’t! Thanks for the trick! ?
Hah! Love it.
I do the same thing! I hate my husbands stupid socks so I just throw them in his drawer inside out. The annoying thing is I don’t think he cares…it would drive me nuts if I was in his shoes! I also don’t wash anything that isn’t in the hamper, so when he just throws them down in the closet next to the hamper they don’t get washed.
Ah yes…I enjoy “folding” my son’s pants with one leg inside out…that or refusing to wash them until they are fixed and he complains he has not pants…hmmm oh so sorry (not). 😛
Do you have any passive aggressive ways to deal with a hubby who just informed me after 11 yrs, he absolutely hates my family and can’t even stand to be around them for 5 mins? All though they treat him with nothing but niceness and respect.
Have helped us out of more messes than we would like to admit.
Still steaming about this after 3 weeks !
Dip his toothbrush in the toilet. Repeat as needed. You’ll feel better.
Perfect.
Stop hanging with his family. He’ll get a clue when he has to take the children to his family events by himself!
I would have them over for dinner. Then a bbq on the weekend. Then maybe a Sunday lunch. Ooo, and have them sleep over! Doesn’t every kid love grandma sleep overs? And if he still can’t realize that he married you and your family is part of the deal, go stay with them for a week to show him it’s all or nothing.
I used to wash my “potty training” sons dirty undies with only my husbands clothes. Sure it gets clean in the washer but it makes me feel a little better knowing they were washed in $#!t water!
My husband would decide on a different shirt after taking one off the hanger so he would half a*s hang it back up, so, I told him I didn’t care how his clothes looked if he didn’t and I would have no problem just throwing them in a heap on the closet floor. He’s much better about it now, could it had been my tone? Lol
my husband would take a freshly ironed (BY ME) or folded (MY ME) shirt, change his mind about wearing it, THEN THROW IT IN THE HAMPER b/c he was too lazy to fold/hang it back up again. The only time in my life I thought I might be arrested.
Mine would hang it back up but, he may as well not had it was so horrible
Oh sweet Moses, I laughed so hard! It’s been a couple of rough weekends for me and this seriously hit home! I LOVE the dinner idea! Yeah, seriously the fam has no idea what we do. Just not doing anything for a couple of days should do it, but we’d likely have to tranquilize ourselves to continue living in the chaos. Tempting tho…
My husbands mom used to go on strike. She wouldn’t say anything just stop doing things and then serve liver and onions for dinner, something only she liked. They all knew they had to do better to eat better.
Go on vacation without them. Take along some other lady friends and do what ever you want to do for days. They will appreciate you a lot more when you get home. My mother was having trouble with being appreciated by my step dad (step dad was a nice guy and I loved him, but still a guy with big blind spots). She came to visit us, and stayed. She kept postponing flying home. One week became two, then three, then a month. We loved having her with us, so bonus for us! Eventually step dad did all the stuff he had been promising to do around the house and asked her very, very nicely to come home. Win for mom!
My daughter thought I was going to give in this morning about letting her have hotdogs again for dinner because her cousin is coming over…haha not a chance today, they get pork chops or nothing. This should be interesting since if I make something she really doesn’t like I’ll make her something else. Well no more
I don’t understand the passive-aggressive culture. Why not be assertive-proactive? Passive-aggressive doesn’t solve anything and it only increases the argument between family members. Those are great teaching moments you have, why not use them to educate lessons in life.
I’m a father with one kid currently waking up from a nap and another on the way. My wife and I cooperate and teach that to our daughter. It’s common cause that we’re all working towards, not attacking and counter-attacking each other.
Great advice! Works great with a cooperative spouse and single child. ☺
No offense, but your a guy!!! You don’t understand that 99.99999% of the guys out there are not like you!!
Let’s ask your wife her opinion
Sounds lovely, however, you only have one toddler. Wait till they get older. You’ll be looking for ideas like these to be teaching them some hard lessons.
Or just wait till they are teenagers. ..I have a 19, 17, 16, 14, 12, 10, and 5 year olds. There are days I wish they were ALL 2 years old!!
Every time my 6 year old complains he does everything around here when he’s asked to do his 3 or 4 chores. He has to start doing mine. He did all of mine for a day once and now he hardly complains. All I have to do is remind him of my “chores” and he shuts up and does his stuff.
I have rarely laughed so hard…..and your columns ALWAYS bring a chuckle and a grin. This is awesome! I ‘quit’ one day, figuring if all my work went unnoticed, they would notice. Oh, contraire! They just used it as an excuse to buy new clothes, and go out to eat. Out of clean dishes? No prob, we’ll use paper plates. “It’ll be like camping!!” they said. They held out-I couldn’t stand it. I suspect mpaulking lives in alternative universe, but kudo’s to him and his wife, and his very fortunate children who will quite possibly never find a spouse who understands that sort of relationship 😉 😉
Socks and underwear that don’t get turned right-side out and are all balled up are washed that way at my house. Backfire: Instead of getting the hint, they just toss them back in the wash without wearing them for me to “wash right” I can only assume. *sigh* Love the post! Thanks for the giggles!
It won’t help. They’ll get pissy and then just go on as they had before… :-/
No no, I’m sure they’ll figure out your beyond unhappy and make life amazing for you but then fall into old habits because people always change when prompted by naggy whining ??
I love your blog. You are truly the only one who tells it like it is! Keep up the great work!! I swear sometimes you’re writing about my life……
Oh my god – the ‘leggings still wearing the underwear” – What is that? My daughter does it so much that I invented a clothing jail where I would put the offending leggings/underwear until she earned them back. But then she would forget about them, and that’s just a dangerous science experiment. So now I make her come from wherever she is in the house (or neighborhood) to separate them and then she gets to be in charge of laundry that day. I guess that’s not passive aggressive….just aggressive aggressive.
This is so true & unfortunately doesn’t improve much as kids get older. The laundry picture could be my 13 year old daughter’s!!! I think about going on strike then realize I can’t live like a herd of pigs. I’m going to try one day though.
After we got married, my husband started taking off his socks and putting them on the floor as he got into bed and there they would lay until I picked them up…so after asking nicely a couple times, I finally just started kicking them under the bed. One day he asked, “where are all my socks”…hmmm, NOT in the hamper!
The markers,and the dinner crack me up. Mt family sucks too. And I pay all the bills here too. SMH.
Aside from my working, and handling the Second Shift, my husband has recently complained that he has NO SOCKS. It might be because he takes them off in the living room, or in the kitchen, and leaves them there. And when I find them, (because of course I’m the one picking things up and finding them,) I’ve been putting them in a bag in the utility room. We’ve talked about his sock-strewing habit to the point of exhaustion. So now he can have an Easter egg style hunt for his bag of inside out, dirty, stinky, abandoned socks. I’m. So. Over. It.
Gee I forgot to look UNDER the bed while doing laundry and only washed clothes in the hamper. Better luck next time. And I have NO IDEA how your breakfast plate that you left on the floor (?) ended up on your pillow?!?
Asked my hubby to sort out the clean from dirty clothes on his floordrobe so I could wash and he cheekily commented that he thought maybe a caterpillar had moved in given the number of socks he found…
I’m currently experimenting with the “I’m not picking up your half of the room” method. No laundry is getting done that is currently on his half of the bedroom, I’m not picking up trash or dishes from his side of the office, and I’m not washing his uniforms. We’ll see how long this lasts….
To all the women who feel so poorly about their lives:
Your men (most of them, myself included) are morons. We love you, but we are morons. We won’t pick up on any of these actions! Absolutely none of these things will be grasped upon that that is why you’re moping around the house all day on our days off at work. I’m assuming if most of us sat down without the kids, looked into your eyes and you told us “this tight little pink that you used to play with so much is not your f*****g maid. Please be more thoughtful. How can I let you know better that this is pissing me off to the point of putting your oral hygiene in the toilet, please stop!” We would probably ignore you unless there was some v****a at stake. However, if you didn’t nag us about everything that bugged you about our actions throughout the day, we would listen because we wouldn’t understand why you stopped calling us all day long. I can’t speak for every guy out there because I’m 100% an outlier in most respects, but I don’t want the woman I chose out of 3.75 BILLION OTHER WOMEN (number of current women on earth not researched and guesstimated based off current population) to be angry at me and let it build up until she explodes. Communication, forgiveness of lower intelligence choices, remembering the love you once couldn’t think about anything other than for us, these are the paths to happiness and reduction of marital strife. As far as for the kids, we know you’re the better parent. We know you do the hard part. We love you for it even if we forget to tell you every day. ::kisses and hugs to my beautiful wife::
Some of my tactics have been:
Oh you wanna go to a friend’s house or have hockey practice, huh how you going to get there because I am busy and you didn’t check with me, you just assumed I would take you. (Yes I took them, but let them sweat it out a little)
Threw all there clothes back on the floor, when they asked why, I said, “oh I thought that is where you keep it since that’s where I found it.
OR
I have picked up there rooms after I had asked and threaten that I would do it if they didn’t. However, this time I kept it. They thought I threw it out like I promised since they couldn’t find there stuff anymore. After they started keeping their rooms cleaned they got it back.
Teenage years when the one became very unappreciated they received the ” room of doom”. Everything was removed except bed and blanket, (yes like jail). They had to earn everything back, they were so tired of sitting in the room of doom they asked if they could mow the lawn, do the dishes . . . etc. It worked and none of the other kids ever wanted the room of doom.
The trick . . . following through on your threats.
When you ask what they want for supper and you get “I don’t care.. I don’t care” from everyone. Don’t make anything and when they ask why you didn’t make them anything while YOU are sitting there eating say to them… YOU SAID YOU DIDN’T CARE SO I DIDN’T CARE
Why not try talking to your husband? When it’s quiet and the two of you are alone talk about how overworked and under appreciated you feel. Kids can be assigned chores to make the load lighter. And the rest that you have to do,, well, by getting pregnant 3 times you signed on for this, so buckle up, Buttercup!
I like your style! As of now I have a non verbal toddler and baby so I can’t be told how much I suck. Although my toddler finds other ways like if he falls down and scrapes his knee he runs over to me and lightly smacks my leg like WTF mom! I have to tell him “it’s not MY fault you fell over!” I can only image what’s in store in a few years.
http://cupofjackie.blogspot.com
Oh my gosh, I love this! You are genius!
http://www.waywarddaisy.com/
Pretty funny stuff, especially the dinner one. Watch out though, this game can be played both ways!
For example, I once made a counter point by only making coffee for myself in the morning because I always get up first. Dirty looks ensued, but I think the point was made for a little while anyway.
You’re a total c**t! You don’t deserve any kindness. I hope you’re raped and then eaten by a leopard.