The original post: /r/amitheasshole by /u/mundanea1 on 2025-04-16 13:15:44.
I (28F) was temporarily staying with my father's ex (59?F) either until my father (61M) got a place for us (he is still concerned that I now live without him) or I got enough money to move out.
Before this kitchen incident: Her son has this three wheeled bike with a large basket on the back in the garage that is never used. Her garage is packed. My dad asked me to grab his ladder. No problem except that I need to move a few things so I can go through the garage door. I put a wheeled desk chair into the basket of the bike since it fit perfectly. While I was hanging out with dad, she texted and said I was inconsiderate of her son's things by doing this. I took it out when I got back.
I was sad and thought that I should make up for this. So why not clean the kitchen? It was in dire need of cleaning as she has a tendency to just leave things open and have things scattered about. So, while the household were leaving, I told her that I would clean the kitchen.
First step for me when cleaning a kitchen is wiping out the fridge because its usually fast. I noticed that a lot of things were expired. No problem. I check everything and put the expired items in a bag. I texted her saying that I'll leave the bag on the counter so she can poke through it when she got back.
She then started lecturing me calling me inconsiderate for touching her things and that I should know better because I've had roommates before and have a mini fridge in my room. 1, if my roommate and I had expired stuff in our fridge we'd definitely be throwing that stuff away once we noticed and 2, I didn't know that was the situation we had. I thought this was everybody's kitchen.
Whatever, I put all her items back as she requested, washed just my dishes, and took my containers into my room while leaving the rest of kitchen untouched. Later on while she lectured me about something that wasn't even my fault, she mentioned that an example of me being irresponsible and inconsiderate was me not cleaning the kitchen when I said I would:
When you took the items out of the refrigerator and put everything out on the counter and said you were throwing it out, it buckled my mind cause I didn't understand why you were doing that. You said it was to clean the kitchen, but yet I came home and every counter was dirty and the whole kitchen was dirty, and then you had a comment you hurt my feelings cause you touched my stuff I've never treated you with the same regard that you have treated me since you've been here but I'm telling you right now you're 28 years old. You're not a child. You know what you're doing.
All I would like to know: did I overstep with the expired items? I didn't mean to be rude. I really did think I was helping, but was I just being insulting or controlling?
tl;dr: While cleaning the kitchen I bagged a bunch of expired items which upset my dad's ex-wife. Since she called me inconsiderate, I did not complete my offer to clean the kitchen. Later, she called me inconsiderate for this decision.