Woman Upset After Mom Secretly Makes Changes to Apartment While She’s on Vacation

A young woman seeks support from the Reddit community following an emotional dispute with her family over home renovations done without her permission. 

In her post, the 25-year-old explains that she and her fiancé live in an apartment owned by her mother, and while it has “its problems,” they love it and consider it in “good condition.”

Shortly after moving in, they went on a family vacation with her fiancé’s parents, and her mother entered their home and cleaned it without telling them.

“We felt very uncomfortable,” she writes, adding that it felt like “a breach of privacy” and that it made her feel her efforts to make the space theirs were “not enough.”

The young woman says she spoke to her mother after that incident, expressing gratitude but also setting a clear boundary. “I told my mum that while we were thankful for the help, please don’t do it again because we are not comfortable.”

This year, she says, there seemed to be progress in respecting her boundaries when her mother approached her before their trip. “My mum asked me if she can wash our curtains while we are away… since I need help with that anyway I said yes and decided to trust her.”

However, when they returned from vacation, it became clear that more had been done than they had agreed on. “It was obvious more things changed than what we know about,” she writes, describing duct tape covering damaged furniture, a ripped rug, and rearranged belongings.

She points out that the bathroom cabinet seemed to have been broken off from one of the places it was attached to the wall. 

There was also a fresh paint job on the bathroom ceiling and toilet wall, which concerned her because she knew “a simple paintjob won’t fix it” given the existing issues from a previous renovation.

The young woman stresses that she understands her family wanted to help, but says these were repairs she had intentionally delayed. 

“I would rather wait for a good job that needs to be done once than fix it over and over again,” she explains, noting that her fiancé’s father had done “an amazing job in the kitchen” and she was willing to be patient for similar quality.

When she asked her mother why these changes were made without discussion, the conversation turned tense. “They could tell we were upset but they did not know that my silence and short answers was because I was trying not to cry,” she shares.

She insists she was not trying to be ungrateful but was looking for understanding. “It is not about the help but the trust… their trust in me to being able to do things, to be on their level,” she says.

Instead, she says her mother and grandmother seemed to take her question as a personal attack. “They basically sent me away, clearly thinking that my fiancé was turning me against them,” she writes.

The emotional core of her frustration lies in feeling excluded from decisions about her own living space. “Them not including us,” she says simply, capturing the heart of the dispute before asking if she was in the wrong.

In the thread, one commenter asked if she has a written agreement about living in her mother’s flat or if she pays rent. They pointed out that without such an agreement, her mother “has every right to feel concerned about the loss of value” during the time she lives there, while also noting it’s “not ok that she doesn’t communicate openly about it.”

In response, the young woman revealed that they only have a spoken agreement. “We wanted to pay rent but they said it was for us… if we ever wanted to have our own place,” she explains, adding that the only condition was to pay the bills, which she and her fiancé split between them.

She also says that repairs have been done in the past with family involvement. “We did repairs in the past together,” she notes, which makes the recent lack of communication even more hurtful.

While she acknowledges her family’s intentions, she feels that decisions about her home should involve her.