Chores and house cleaning aren't often seen as fun.
When people are kids, that's how weekend days are usually spent.
A lot of resentment can get built up around the household chores.
So much hostility can be fostered; actions must be taken.
Redditor Technicolor_Reindeer found themself in a personal dilemma regarding their past with their mother and her reaction to house cleaning, so they turned to the "Am I The A**Hole" (AITAH) subreddit for feedback.
Similar to AITA, the AITAH subReddit allows posters to ask for advice and post about ending relationships—both things that are banned on AITA. However, there are no required voting acronyms—only suggested ones—and no official final judgment declared.
They asked:
"AITAH for hiring professional cleaners to prove my mom was a spite cleaner?"
The original poster (OP) explained:
"This is from a few years ago, but it's come up in arguments lately, so I figured I'd get some outside opinions."
"My mom is what you might call a spite cleaner."
"She uses cleaning as a tool to control, nag, and whine, and whatnot."
"My siblings and I bore the brunt of it."
"Often she delegated cleanings to a Saturday or Sunday, which we called 'Hell Day.'"
"She would usually go out to buy food for the week/errands, and leave us to it, and it seemed no matter how much cleaning we did, she was never happy with the result, and the day would end with all of us arguing and upset."
"Sometimes we would barely do any cleaning since the end result was the same - her complaining."
"Venting to each other outside the house one day, my siblings and I decided to prove she was just complaining for the sake of complaining."
"We set up a GoFundMe to raise funds to pay a local house cleaning company, posing it as something along the lines of 'Help us get a professional house cleaning to surprise our mom!'"
"And we were able to raise a few hundred dollars, mostly from family and friends (who knew our situation), which covered the cost (and a nice big tip for the cleaners from what was left)."
"So for one cleaning weekend when our mom had shopping plus getting the car looked at, we scheduled a local cleaner to arrive, they were 2 very nice women who proceeded to clean the house till it was sparkling (we chatted a bit with them while they were working, one of the ladies had almost 20 years experience cleaning homes, the other 8)."
"With their consent, we filmed some clips of them cleaning, saying it was to surprise our mom."
"So mom gets home with our uncle, who was coming to dinner, and she's barely in the door, she's already started complaining about our 'usual' subpar cleaning, that either I, my brother, didn't clean the surfaces well enough, or that my sister didn't sweep one spot."
"These were repetitive complaints, she often said."
"Long story short, we show her the footage, her face gets red, and she proceeds to scream at us for embarrassing her in front of her brother, how dare we hire cleaners and have strangers in the house, blah blah."
"We argue back that this proves she just weaponizes cleaning."
The OP was left to wonder:
"Am I the A**hole?"
Some Redditors weighed in by using the AITA voting acronyms:
- NTA - Not The A**hole
- YTA - You're The A**hole
- NAH - No A**holes Here
- ESH - Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors decided the OP was NOT the A**hole here.
"Hahaha. This is a fun story. NTA."
"This would have ended one of two ways:"
"- Proof that you and your siblings didn't clean well enough."
"- Proof that your mom simply complained for the sake of complaining."
"The embarrassment she felt was well deserved." ~ MajesticDisaster3977
"NTA. Sounds like you deweaponized her, and it still chaps."
"I’m sure she found something else in time." ~ RubyRaven907
"Yeah, she sounds like the type of person who revels in being unhappy. And worse, she used the constant negativity to control her children." ~ IceSeeker
"This sounds like my mom whenever my siblings or I make a choice that will benefit us."
"It's gotten to the point that we all have decided to move out of the house since the youngest will be in university, and we kept each other sane."
"My brother and I have done our best to keep our sister sane and able to enjoy the bliss of being a teenager when we weren't allowed to."
"What I mean is having a social life outside of school, a romantic relationship, and not being ridiculed or humiliated at the drop of a hat."
"When our mom gets like that, everyone is walking on eggshells for however long her foul mood will last to avoid her focusing on us, even our dad tiptoes around her!"
"She has to have the last word on anything, including whether we have a job or what we do in general."
"She also has to know where we are when we are away from her."
"She recently flipped her lid when I managed to secure a trucking job."
"She does complain that we are beyond stupid and that we can't make adult decisions unless she makes them for us."
"Then, she'll flip it and try to raise our self-esteem after destroying it a good while before that."
"Another thing to add, we are all startled awake every morning by her, as in, she'll come in to our rooms and scream our name at the top of her lungs."
"Not gonna miss that when I'm out. "
"The rest of the time she's fine." ~ QueenScottish
"My ex was like that, too."
"Fortunately, she was also kind of not the brightest bulb."
"Her kids and I eventually found out that the trigger for her anger was if we were just sitting around or whatever when she came home."
"So we could deep-clean the whole house while she's gone, but if she comes home and we're sitting, she's pissed at how we didn't clean at all."
"BUT, we could f**k off all day as long as we were all ostensibly engaged in some kind of cleaning behavior at the moment she walked in the door and for about two minutes afterward (bonus if someone took a second to spray some Simple Green in the air in the front room)."
"In that case, she'd decide the house was clean enough that we didn't need to get yelled at."
"What I actually think was going on is that she hated the idea of anyone enjoying life in any way without her around, so she needed to believe we were all toiling in her absence."
"And since we were like video game N[on]-P[layer]-C[haracter]s who didn't exist when she left the screen, whatever we were doing when she eventually laid eyes on us again must have been what we were doing the whole time she was gone."
"We've cleaned for long enough; she will now benevolently release us from our tasks." ~ Vi_Rants
"You didn't trick her, you exposed her."
"Sometimes it's never good enough."
"Did anything else come from it?"
"Did she tell her friends or other family members how terrible her kids were for doing it? NTA." ~ plasticscoop
"NTA - if you wanna hire somebody to come clean my house, I won’t be upset even a little." ~ Oar_3421
"My spouse ran into this as a kid."
"His stepmother NEVER approved of his first attempt at cleaning/raking/making bed, etc."
"He finally just got into a pattern of agreeing to 'do it again' and goofed around for a while, then called her back to show her the 'redo.'”
"Which she would grudgingly call adequate."
"No idea what she was attempting to teach him." ~ TwoCentsWorth2021
"She sounds like my ex, who did the same thing, and who was a huge narcissistic asshole that used cleaning as a way to control others. NTA." ~ Fabulous-Accident331
"My ex went away for a weekend to help his mum clean out his nonna's house cause she was going into a nursing home."
"I had helped out the previous 3-4 weekends, and I just needed a break from it."
"So I did a deep clean of our apartment - like every nook and cranny til place was gleaming - which took me all day Saturday and Sunday."
"He got home and screamed at me because I was so 'lazy and useless' because I hadn't put away the vacuum yet."
"He apologized later, but it was always his first inclination to abuse me about how bad at cleaning I was." ~ Bagelam
"NTA, but y'all played it wrong. Should’ve gone the guilt path and told her you splurged for a pro to clean the house as a surprise."
"Would love to see her explanation."
"Not only do y'all get confirmation that nothing is good enough, but she’s mad y'all got her an expensive present." ~ Snookin
"Wait, I have long-lost siblings out there somewhere because this sounds just like my mother!!!"
"I could do the exact same cleaning, if not more, one week, and the next, she'd rant and rave I hadn't done anything."
"I wish I had thought of this."
"NTA by any means." ~ brookelynbuddz
"You did trick her!"
"Tricked her into revealing herself as a massive a**hole who likes to yell at her kids to make herself feel powerful."
"10/10 top work." ~ atterysquash
Reddit is with you, OP.
You and your sisters did what you felt was necessary.
Your mom has a lot of issues to work out for herself.
Keep sticking up for yourself.
Good Luck.
