u/katlilly1

Hey all!

Here is the story.

Last week my mother booked a trip in a city a few hours away from where we reside for this weekend. My father has terminal cancer and this trip was for us to spend some time together while he is still feeling okay enough to travel and do things as a family.

This past Thursday, the day before we flew out our very annoying condo management sent us an email that apparently the announcement system was reported as not working for our unit on their end. They said that they would be coming between 9 am to 4 pm today (Monday) and that if we had any pets that they should be locked up. Failure to do so would result in maintenance being unable to service the unit and we would be fined. We weren’t going to be landing back home until 6 pm so obviously we wouldn’t be here. We had a friend look after our 3 cats during the weekend but had to work today, so they could not do that and obviously we were not going to have them locked up all night and day.

Our only other option was to ask my in- laws to come and watch the cats during those hours as they live 20 minutes from us and are retired. I did not want to ask them but we weren’t really left with any other choice unless we wanted to drop $400+ for “not cooperating”. FYI, the building did not care about our situation so, there really wasn’t anything else we could do.

I’ve had issues with my in laws in the past overstepping but they have been better so I reluctantly agreed.

Except… they went through our apartment and started moving things around, mixed freshly cleaned laundry I had hanging to dry in our bathroom into the dirty laundry basket, brought a dirty bottle into the apartment from our balcony that I use to water plants and got dust all over the kitchen counter. Put dirty cat blankets in with my clean cleaning rags. Put a bag of dirty litter into our kitchen garbage instead of taking it to the chute which to me is kind of a big no- cat litter should never enter the kitchen imo. All that I could forgive, that’s neither here nor there.

Where I have an issue is they came into our bedroom and started going through my dirty laundry and put my dirty clothes, underwear and dirty bras and such on the bed. I have no idea what made them do that. And to reiterate, they were only here to put the cats in the bathroom for a couple minutes for the maintenance guys, not to do any sort of cleaning. There really wasn’t any reason in my mind for them to even be going into our bedroom.

I just feel kinda weirded out and invaded that they’d go into a married couples bedroom and start rummaging around our laundry. And before you ask, no, they did not actually do any laundry (thankfully to be honest I would never want anyone doing my laundry). They just went through my dirty clothes for…. I really can’t think of a reason. To add to the embarrassment there were… for lack of a better term, marital aids…if you catch my drift, sitting on a shelf behind the bed, in the room I did not think they would enter. I would think if they were putting things on our bed there is no way they didn’t see them.

We have had talks with them in the past about boundaries and not moving things and rummaging. And I truly thought progress was made before now, it was disappointing.

WIBTAH for temporarily banning them from our apartment until they learn boundaries?

I’m really trying to see it from their side where they likely thought they were being helpful but they just kind of ended up undoing a lot of the cleanup I did before leaving, and making me feel kinda violated in the process. I also have a tendency to get kinda up in arms when people touch my things so I can’t tell if I’m actually just overreacting.

I was also raised where you NEVER go into a married couples bedroom without specifically being instructed to do so/ given explicit permission and this could be a cultural difference. TIA

TL;DR in laws came to watch cats , made a mess and went through my things while I was away