Dear Prudence,
My mother-in-law keeps us sending things to our apartment. My husband and I live in NYC and thus we don’t have a ton of space. I’ve talked to my husband about this as these gifts are almost always a burden. There is usually no gift receipt and sending them back is usually time-consuming and sometimes physically challenging (when large). My husband says he has tried to talk to her about this but she does not listen and he will often just throw the stuff out. I know she is self-conscious and defensive about having been a stay-at-home mom and I suspect these gifts are her way of compensating. Besides the inconvenience, the situation just personally doesn’t sit well with me, having come from a less well-off background that makes me averse to waste.
—Drowning in Boxes