How do I make my MIL understand and take things serious

Due to unforeseen circumstances me and my husband had to break our lease at our apartment and move in with his mom, which also houses 5 of his siblings (all different ages ranging from 23 to 12) his grandmother and a cousin. As soon as we had to break our lease I found out I’m pregnant. I’m now almost 8 months. The house here is disgusting and I don’t want my baby living in such a gross place. We’ve had multiple conversations with mom about how gross it is here and that no one cleans, everyone just sits around and does nothing. She takes it so personally and just sits there and cries about it. If me and my husband clean, it instantly gets gross again since no one picks up after themselves. We don’t eat any of the food here, don’t even cook our own food because it’s just gross. If we do make food we use our own dishes we keep in our room and basically clean the entire kitchen first, and that’s rarely which I miss having home cooked meals but hate feeling like the food I’m cooking is contaminated. We basically spend all of our time in our room, the only other room in the house we ever use is the bathroom and we clean it before we shower every time. I just don’t know what to do anymore. We can’t move into our own place still since we broke our lease and have bad rental history because of that. We could afford it, just get denied. I just don’t know how to make everyone else living here understand and take on the responsibility of picking up after themselves. I’m going to end up spending all my time with my newborn in a small room, and have to clean an entire bathroom or kitchen just to bathe him or clean his bottles and I just know I won’t have the time or energy to do that everyday.
How do I make MIL understand and actually have something be done about it. Nothing we say gets through to her and she just thinks we’re being OCD but in reality it’s just the fact no one does anything. For example, If the bathroom does get cleaned it doesn’t really. The inside of the toilet bowl will be scrubbed and laundry picked up and that’s it. Not under the toilet seat, around the toilet, the sink, the tub. Nothing. Under the toilet seat is brown from months of buildup and even MIL admitted to not wanting to clean it either due to no one else doing it. The shower walls will have soap build up that we end up scrubbing off to take a shower. I have to clean the top of the toilet seat every time I go to pee because the boys will piss on it and not clean it up. Idk I’m just ranting at this point and don’t know if any of this is making any sense, I’m just pregnant and irritated with having to have my baby in such a gross place and having to clean up after so many people that don’t do anything. If everyone else contributed I’d be more than happy to as well, it’s just hard to when it’s just me or my husband and it instantly goes back to how it was.

Posted Jun 27, 2026, 7:16 AM UTC

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