The Organization Is A Lie

Home, In-Laws, Jerk, Karma/Comeuppance, South Carolina, USA | Related | March 24, 2022

I’ve submitted a few stories about my pain-in-the-rear mother-in-law, including this one.

This happened when the kids were still very young and before we changed our locks.

My mother always had a bit of advice for the girls in our family: never mess with another woman’s man or kitchen cabinets. My mother-in-law never followed that advice.

I came home and into my highly-organized kitchen and couldn’t find stuff. Y’all, she had so messed up my kitchen organization.

Mother-In-Law: “Oh, I straightened your kitchen up. It was so silly how you had stuff arranged.”

Me: “EXCUSE ME? I had it arranged exactly how I wanted it. How dare you?!”

She knew this would upset me.

Mother-In-Law: “WELL! See if I ever do anything for you again.”

My husband, who was still in the fog at that time about his mother, actually fussed at me because, after all, his mother was just doing something nice. (He now sees it was just a control thing for her.)

The next week, while she was at work, I went into her house and rearranged her kitchen. I put pans in the laundry room above the washer and dryer and dishes under the sink, laid her utensils out on a cabinet shelf, poured the sugar in several old butter containers — you get the gist. When she got home, she came storming over, demanding to know if I was in her house.

Me: *Smirking* “Why, yes. I was so thankful for you reorganizing my kitchen that I wanted to thank you by redoing yours while you were working. It was such a mess, and I spent alllllllll day working on it.”

Husband: “Oh, that is so nice, isn’t it, Mom?”

She just spit out something and left. She never messed with my kitchen cabinets again. Game, set, match.