House guests are unpredictable.
As a host, you want to make sure your home is tidy enough to impress your visitors, whether it's for their first visit or not.
If there's one thing you can't be held accountable for, however, is what goes down due to their questionable behavior or idiosyncrasies.
It turns out that you can't always be prepared when inviting people over.
Strangers online shared their stories when Redditor Jentenny999 asked:
"What's the weirdest thing guest has done at your house?"
Some people interpret being told to "make yourself at home" way too far.
The Organizer
"I was emptying your dishwasher and I didn't really know where anything was supposed to go, so I went ahead and rearranged all your cabinets in a way that makes sense to meeee..."
"I knew my MIL staying with us was going to be a problem, but this was a level I was not prepared for. Like really, you couldn't just open cabinets until you found the cups and put them in there, and so on?"
– oGsBathSalts
"Oh! Yours rearranges the kitchen, too? Mine has tried twice. She even stole a copy of our house key to "surprise us with a well arranged kitchen". We changed the locks and told her if she ever tries again, she will never step foot in our home ever again."
– HnyBee_13
Everything Spic And Span
"My sister's mother-in-law visited them a year or so after they got married. They both had to work, and that meant leaving her at home all day."
"When they got back, the mother in law had decided to be helpful and clean the house. Vacuumed the living room, did dishes, sanitized and reboxed all of their adult time toys..."
"I thought it was weird then, and it was, but these days it'd be worth it to get the dishes done."
– edgarpickle
Grandma's Task
"My grandparents stayed with my family for a few months after my grandfather had surgery. I was a young teen then. I took the guest room because it was smaller and let them have mine. I offered, it was initially for a month only, and I still kept my things in the closet."
"My grandmother reorganised everything, checked my nightstand and desk. Went to every single thing and then had the audacity to whine to my parents."
"Ever since that I can’t have people in my room without feeling uncomfortable, and they can’t be left alone. There’s nothing to hide, but I can’t stand it."
– tla_ava
The audacity of some people, honestly.
New Subscriber
"Guy from high school stayed at my house a few years back. It was someone that I wasn't close with, but someone I knew, and he gave me a sob story about how the pipes in his house burst and got everything wet, so he needed a place to crash for the night."
"When he got to my place, I showed him how to use my Firestick so he could watch TV, and then I went to bed."
"I woke up in the morning to a bunch of emails from Amazon."
"Thanks for Signing up for HBO Go"
"Thanks for signing up for the Showtime App"
"etc."
"A**hole signed me up for a bunch of premium movie channel apps."
– alwaysmyfault
Keeping The Roads Safe
"We had a couple over for dinner. They had a good time, but they stayed and stayed. Around midnight they asked where they should sleep. We lived in a small one-bedroom apartment and were puzzled, so we delicately asked them if they wouldn’t be going home."
"They said since we’d given them alcohol, they wouldn’t be able to drive. Four adults, one bottle of wine, six hours. We were nonplussed. I gave them a couple of blankets and pillows and said they could sleep on the couch or floor. We did not invite them again."
– Maleficent_Scale_296
"Opposite happened to us. We went to a small get-together. Towards the end of the night as we were saying goodbye they refused to let us leave because we had ONE beer."
"The only thing that saved us in the end was they had cats and husband is allergic. This was my first time meeting them so my anxiety was through the roof."
– SchemeNo9310
The Babysitter's Zone
"my mom told me the woman who babysat me when i was like 3 years old would change the place of our entire furniture to her liking lmao my mom would get home and our whole living room would be diferente and the woman would just say 'well i like it better like that' and my mom would be 'yeah but that’s my house, not yours????' "
– luhfalchi
Child On The Loose
"An old coworker I haven’t seen in years came over with her toddler son. She came over because her teenage daughter was looking to make some money cleaning house and/or yard work, and was going to give me an estimate. My husband and I are child free, and therefore our home is not child proofed…at all."
"We collect antiques. She let her toddler run in our house. It was like she was just completely checked out and this was her “me” time to not deal with her kid. He was an absolute terror. I had to tell him no about 50 times, guide him out of our different rooms, tell him to not pull our dogs tails (we have 3 senior dogs, so I’m very protective of them)."
"She didn’t even give me a quote for her daughter. I finally, in a nice way, kicked them out. If she would have parented her child, I wouldn’t have a problem. I get toddlers are a handful, I just don’t want to deal with an acquaintances child who has zero direction from his parents in my own home. F'k that."
Unsolicited Home Renovation
"Relative of my husband stayed with us for a month while trying to get back on her feet, looking for a job and whatnot. She's a strange person and did a few strange thing, but the thing that was the strangest (and rudest) was redecorate the guest room. Put up shelves, badly, by drilling huge screws into the wall."
"Took a painting off the wall and shoved it into the back of the closet and then took a metal art off the wall in the foyer and hung it in the guest room, crooked, with the same shoddy screws in the wall method. The wallpaper where she drilled got all torn and ruined. This was that nice fabric type wallpaper that looks like it has embroidered patterns."
"And then she had the nerve to be livid when she was told how not cool that was. I don't get the logic in her thinking what she did was okay. After she (predictably) lost her (well-paying) job after two days, we kicked her out, and I turned the guest room into an office. The walls looked like sh*t. I've never been in someone's house and ever thought to mess with their stuff."
– EnchantingEva35
These people made a mess after themselves. Now what?
Making A Splash
"My ex-mother-in-law. She had to pee in the middle of the night, but her son (my ex) was in the only bathroom. Instead of knocking she got a glass out of the kitchen, went into the garage and squatted to pee into the cup."
"I had heard the garage door open and got up to see what was going on. It startled her, causing her to spill her cup of pee all over the floor."
– TrippleDubbs
Courteous Pee
"When I was in pharmacy school (3rd year), a student in the year above asked if she could spend the night at the place I was renting (close to school) so she could have a place to stay while taking a NAPLEX prep course (the big exam after graduating to become a licensed pharmacist). I agreed because I had met her a few times previously and was on friendly terms."
"It was a small place with only one bathroom, basically in the living room area. She went to pee, but I never heard anything, which is fine, except when I went to use the bathroom, the rug in front of the toilet was drenched…. I guess she didn’t want me to hear her peeing so she tried to do it silently but ended up basically pissing on the floor."
"I didn’t say anything at the time but maybe I should have, I was just so flabbergasted at the moment. "
– webesmart
How Not To Fix A Clog
"Our redneck friend was staying with us for a night. He said our shower drain was clogged and got pliers and just ripped the drain cover-up."
"This was an apartment, so the drain cover was like fused into the tub. Sharp metal was sticking up from him bending it open."
– DiscoLibra
Every Man's Bar
"Had a neighbor stop by. We gave him a beer and he popped the top off and casually tossed it (ETA: the cap!) on the floor like it was completely normal."
– strangeloop414
I once hosted a party for my show friends when I was a performer in New York.
One of the visitors was someone whom I just met as she was a new addition to the cast.
As the place didn't get too messy, there were still plenty of empty plastic cups, used paper plates, and dirty napkins strewn around.
Some of the serving dishes would have had to be placed in the dishwasher in shifts.
While I was still hosting, this person took it upon herself to clean up, hand wash the dishes, and re-organize some of the food items that had been brought out back in the pantry closet.
Some people might complain about a guest re-organizing your kitchen clutter and doing major cleaning like that, unsolicited.
I loved her for it.
