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Coffee Break: Sweater Stone

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pumice bar labeled SWEATER STONE

I've had little combs to help smooth pilling sweaters, but I haven't had a sweater stone. I saw one advertised somewhere and thought it was a cool idea — something about taking the metallic teeth of the comb to my pretty sweater has always given me pause.

Eileen Fisher has this nice version for $13. They describe it as a “natural pumice stone that gently removes pilling from knits and fabrics — and extends the life of garments.” Nice! They also note that it's a staff favorite.

This one is exclusive to EF, but you can find similar options elsewhere, such as this sweater saver brick from Hollywood Fashion Secrets.

Sales of note for 1/15:

117 Comments

  1. I want to buy a beautiful pair of fingerless gloves / hand warmers for an elderly relative that always has freezing hands indoors. She has very delicate skin, is very petite, and always looks chic. I want to be her when I’m 90!

    I’m probably looking for cashmere (or silk?). Any recs appreciated.

    2. It may be too late, but this sounds like the sort of thing that etsy shines at- customizing size + getting the fiber content you’d want.

      1. I wondered this too. But since the quality of cashmere can vary so wildly, I was worried about going with etsy for this.

    3. I have three pairs of cashmere fingerless gloves from Nordstrom – workhorses for me. Agree that Etsy will also have lots of options, especially if you want longer length.

      1. Nordstrom brand? Thanksn- I found those. I was hoping for colors, but I may come back to these. Thanks again.

        1. yes, Nordstrom brand! I see that they only have slate grey on their site; I have them in black, camel, and a lighter shade of grey. Good luck!

  2. Anyone read a good based-on-a-true-story book lately? This is my mother’s favorite genre. Fiction or non-fiction with a strong narrative style. Any time period, but nothing gruesome. Thanks!

    3. The Poisoner’s Handbook is amazing, especially if she loves science / chemistry / poisoning as a method of crime (not gruesome).

    5. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhorn. Based on the true story of a midwife in Revolutionary-era America who delivered a whole bunch of babies and didn’t lose any of them.

      Also cosign The Rose Code.

      1. Martha Ballard, the midwife Senior Attorney refers to, wrote an extensive diary that has survived (rare for a woman of that era). I find the diary itself, and the book about it, fascinating. The book is called The Midwife’s Tale, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

      2. I’m reading this and I had no idea it was based on a true story! It’s really good.

    6. Becoming Queen Victoria by Kate Williams. Ties in nicely as a sort-of prequel to the Netflix series too

    8. This might not fit your wish for non-gruesome: The Flower Sisters was fantastic and I can’t believe I had never heard of the real-life incident it was based on until reading this book.

    11. The Many Lives of Mama Love. I also second Isola, Frozen River, & The Personal Librarian

  3. I would love to know your best email tips. Or things you want to try, that I’ve tried and failed at, etc. I have an Outlook 365 account (law firm) and a Gmail account (personal).

    My current state:
    – I stopped creating individual folders for each client. I created QuickStep folders and aggressively folder into either “Client-Done” or “Non-Billable.” Inbox means I need to follow up on something – but it’s not my to-do list. I keep a separate list.
    – I have a hard time explaining why something lives in my inbox. Usually I need to answer and/or am waiting on an associate. If something is not done but I can have it out of my inbox, I attach it to a calendar invite on the new deadline/follow up deadline and folder it.
    – I also created a ton of rules so 80% of non-billable emails don’t even go to my inbox at all. I tell myself I will read it weekly but don’t. I end up missing some bar-related news, but can’t keep up with the dozens of other emails.
    – I have filters turned on my in personal email (“Promotions”) but no built-in filters like “Focused” on in my Outlook. I don’t trust them, maybe I should.
    – I sort my inbox by date unless I have 250+ emails, then I sort by “From” and aggressively folder from there.
    – I tried blocking time for email like only checking 3x/day but can’t get the hang of it.

    To the extent context matters for advice – I’m 40, partner at a law firm. I know some people on this board get more email than me, some may get less. I estimate I receive 200-300 work emails/day and send 40-80/day on average. I find “sent” volume is a better gauge of how ‘busy’ I am. I tried inbox zero but can’t do it. For me, I’m comfortable having ~100 items in my inbox, if it goes over 250 I need to spend a half day just triaging and sorting email. I also tried color-coding (inconsistent), unsubscribing to anything I can, and task lists. I can’t use the task flag/list thing, can’t get ahold of it. I don’t use Slack or messaging but I’m afraid that’s coming, and I have no idea how to sort those right now. I feel like I could use a 1-hour CLE where experienced professionals who manage email well simply share 5 tips each and I would learn so much. Hoping to crowdsource here!!

    1. The best advice I have is to try to reduce back and forth by short-circuiting it in the first email. If you’re scheduling three depos with witnesses that the in house counsel won’t let you contact directly (always a complete cluster of emails back and forth), here’s a script I might use:

      “Hi Jim — Thanks for your help in coordinating Janet, Jerry, and Leo’s depo preps. Below, I’ve provided WhenIsGood links for each deponent that you can forward on to them. We’ve added our availability to each link; if you can coordinate them adding theirs (and of course add yours if you’d like to join!), we’ll get calendar invites off to them right away.”

      Switching to this style, which does not invite a reply email, dropped my time doing logistics significantly. I don’t like the links where a client just signs up for a slot on your calendar because I think it suggests you are more important than them; the WhenIsGood-style approach feels more egalitarian to me.

    2. On this note– I would start to look at spots where you are having a lot of email back and forth and try to troubleshoot from there. I am a general counsel to a business unit in a large company. Things that have helped me decrease my email counts:
      –Regular 1:1s. I never had these while I was at a firm, and it would have helped tremendously. Often, I was waiting to hear back from a partner on something that got lost in their email etc.
      –Office Hours. My main client now has office hours bi-weekly. It’s a block on his calendar where other business members and me can hop on and discuss something that needs his decision. This may be helpful for you if you are managing different internal teams/associates.

      Neither of these help with your external email, but they would help with a lot of emails you get from associates, etc. that I’m sure are cluttering your inbox, and you likely waste a lot of time reviewing because you can’t tell if you need to respond or not, etc.

    3. Do you use the snooze function at all? It sounds like you have a system with calendar reminders, but if I’m waiting on someone else or I send a request and want to be following up in a week, I snooze the relevant email to pop back up at a later time.

  4. Looking for book recommendations for a college student who was a huge reader and wants to get back to it.

    Growing up she loved science fiction, but the last books she has borrowed were more traditional literature by Saul Bellow and Joan Didion. I think she is trying to explore more types of books, but isn’t sure where to start.

    1. Margaret Atwood, but not the Handmaid’s Tale (which I love but many people have read it already). My favorite is Cat’s Eye, but she might also like Blind Assassin or Oryx and Crake, which both have a bit of a sci-fi flavor.

      1. Cats Eye is great. I read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith when I was in college and loved it.

    2. I love Becky Chambers’s feel-good sci fi: A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and its sequels, and the lovely, lovely Monk & Robot books.

    3. Perhaps The Sun Magazine. I like it as a former literature major getting back into reading. It had fiction, nonfiction, and interviews on a wide variety of topics.

    4. For general reading in different genres outside of scifi, anything ever written by Frederik Backman and Amor Towles is absolutely beautiful in its own way.

      Eric Larson and Mary Roach are also interesting authors, although I would say both of them focus on producing “edutainment” more than great literature.

    5. North Woods by Daniel Mason is incredible. Literary fiction, beautifully written and cleverly done.

      1. This book is gorgeous, but I feel like you have to have Lived A Life to really appreciate it. I’m sure some college students would like it, but I am in my 40s and feel like I would like it even more in my 70s.

    7. Nghi Vo’s prose is beautiful. The Singing Hills Cycle is fabulous (group of novellas) and The City in Glass is amazing.

      This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. (This was also the favorite of a college-age student of mine.)

      The River Has Roots, also by Amal El-Mohtar.

  5. I know nothing about video games so I’m seeking recs for Nintendo Switch games for a 10 year old girl and a 6 year old boy. Can be different games, but fine if it works for both!

    3. My son loved Untitled Goose Game from ages 8-10. Animal Crossing is a classic also.

      1. Mario Kart is fun for all ages.

        signed, an elder millennial who still plays it with her high school friends when we get together.

  6. Help! I hate New Year’s and I need a plan. I’m single 40-something who has a lot of friends and an active social life, but at the holidays, specifically NYE, my friends fall into one of two categories:

    1) hibernating at home with their families/kids
    2) traveling out of town to visit friends/family or taking other fabulous trips

    I never have either of these things to do because my family is local to my city and I don’t have kids. I’ve come to terms with the fact that no one is having an incredible NYE, but the feeling remains that I am left out, like it’s a giant game of musical chairs and I’m left without a seat.

    The last two years, I’ve just gone and sat at one other single friend’s place and watched movies… it was fine, but I felt kind of down about it. I could also go to my parents’ or my sister’s, but I kind of want something just for me.

    So. What should I do? I’ve been thinking about planning a kind of staycation solo retreat, doing candlelit yoga or a day at the sauna/spa. I live in a major city and can afford to throw money at this. I would prefer not to be out on the streets at night dealing with drunks and trying to find a cab.

    Any ideas? Am I alone in this? Every year it comes and I get SO sad. I want to take action so I don’t spiral into NYE despair.

    1. I’m eager to hear what people have to say. I’m here to say that you aren’t alone in it. I’m married, no kids. We each have a lot of friends but we have no couple friends, so we rarely do anything in the evenings together and with other people. And I too have been wondering what to do on NYE. There’s something very unfulfilling about staying home and doing my usual dinner/bed routine. And yet I cannot come up with anything better. It feels very blah.

      1. My husband and I are in a similar situation – married in our 40s, but the only couple friends we have aren’t exactly local (about 45 minutes away in various directions). We’re staying in this year, buti I’ve taken the day off and am doing a more intricate dinner, and we’ve gotten a nice bottle of sparkling to celebrate.

        We’re not really into being “out” on NYE up until midnight, because getting home always feels fraught where we are – but in the past we’ve made a nice dinner reservation between 7:30/8:30p so it feels like we’re still out and celebrating, but are home before the true rush to get home begins.

        If you like a particular restaurant near you – are they doing a NYE menu that you could capitalize on?

    2. Why not go to the spa/sauna during the day, and then go to your parents’s or sister’s place in the evening. That is what I would do. Even if I had gone to the spa all day, I would probably still feel a bit bummed to be sitting at home alone in the evening. [I realize this could be a me “problem”, and others might be totally fine staying home alone!]

      When I was single, I often used to plan a trip with another single friend over NYE. Maybe an option for next year?

    3. Host a party for people who are in town, a family-friendly affair if needed (like during the day)?

      FWIW, I have almost never done anything for NYE, and am very rarely awake at midnight on NYE these days. And I am married and have a kid – in our case, “hibernating” means treating NYE like any other night basically, and I think this is fairly common. Sleep is a precious commodity to most people with children, especially young ones.

      2. I’ve also been in the not able to stay awake until anywhere near midnight camp for well over a decade, and I don’t even have a kid as an excuse. But I have been out to see the sun rise on every New Year’s Day, which is usually beautiful at this time of year.

    4. Is travel on the table? I went to Rome and to Madrid on my own for NYE (different years, obviously). Paris was next on my list. I booked myself a great dinner with a good view of the festivities.

      1. This was going to be my answer, why not take your own option 2 and do a cool solo trip?

    5. If you are open to going out in a more lowkey way, what about a late dinner reservation with a friend followed by watching the ball drop with champagne at your place? You can usually find a fun prix fixe menu. Depending on where you live in relation to downtime, I’ve found it’s pretty tame if we do an ~8:00 PM dinner and head home after. I also enjoy a New Year’s Day yoga class.

    6. I used to do a meditative evening at home and journal about the year ending and my hopes for the coming year. Candles, silence, very intentionally unplugging from tv/music/phone. Went to bed about 10 or 11. Got up and took my dog on a little hike – my favorite was a cold, empty beach. Post cute pics of my dog and we’re back to the real world ;)

    7. do you have a colleague or someone you may not be so close with who might be in the same position? for several years a colleague would come over and hang out with me and my kids on NYE (i’m divorced so you know sort of alone too). It started because on about 12/28 I just said something like “my kids and i are home for NYE. it makes me sad…” and she said something like “oh yeah me too i hate it” and i said “i don’t know if this is weird but you would like to come over? you can sleep over if you’d like or i’d put you back on metro north….

    9. Do your friends with kids do anything for NYE you could tag along for?

      When kids were little we’d have 1-2 other families over: kids would do a giant sleepover in the basement and the adults would sleep in the bedrooms.

      Now with older kids we either do that or have additional families over that live nearby (with kids who can stay up til midnight) who go home after midnight.

    10. I highly doubt your friends with kids are truly hibernating. Could you join them after the kids go to bed even if it’s just pizza and bubbly and watching the NYE show?

    11. In my city, there are several big NYE parties for which tickets are sold. Would you want to go to an event like that with the single friend you celebrated with last year? You could probably get a hotel room nearby to avoid being “in the streets.”

    12. PSA to the friends with spouses and kids: invite your friends over! Even if you’re having a chill night in, invite them!

        1. Of course, I just know for my friends with young kids it’s easier for me to go to them, rather than for them to schlep to me

    13. I wish more people my age were interested in having the social life my parents and grandparents had. BTW – my mom and grandmothers worked and had elder care/childcare responsibilities.

      But they all continued to have fun social lives, both as couples and solo.

      I know for a fact they never chose to “hibernate” with their kids on NYE!

      1. This confuses me so much. My parents and grandparents never hibernated. We went to family and friend parties all the time and they still do that. The stereotypical falling asleep on coats and all.

        1. That’s what I’m saying!

          Parents of my generation socialize way, way less than my parents and grandparents did with children at home.

          I don’t get why OP’s parent friends are all trying to hibernate.

        2. To each their own! I come from introverts, and have maintained my family traditions.

          1. Same. Most people here would probably consider me a hibernator, but I have way more of a social life than my parents did.

      2. I have cut out hosting for the vast majority of people in my life because they are terrible guests. They cancel at the last minute all the time. I have noticed that if I host at a restaurant, the cancellation rate is almost zero. For a dinner party at home, it’s closer to thirty percent. People are rude af.

    14. Do any of your hobbies host NYE events?

      Can you host that single friend and make it more of a fancy staycation/DIY spa event rather than just movies on the sofa?

    15. I’m a single 40-something and most of my single friends also don’t go out for NYE. It’s really expensive and crowded. What we have done when we wanted to do something was go to a later movie or out to a nice dinner. We were almost never out or together at midnight though because we didn’t want to be on the road with a lot of drunk people.

      I personally buy a little bottle of prosecco and good takeout and watch movies. I’m probably more the go hike on NYD instead.

    17. For NYE my friends and I just get small group together at someone’s house for appetizers and drinks.

      Could you host the same? Your friends with kids could still come and just leave when it’s the kids’ bedtime. Others could stay til midnight

    18. Totally get it! It can feel nice to be part of a big ritual, and New Year’s is a big one.

      Are there any New Years Eve concerts where you live? Invite your friend to fancy dinner out, concert, and home in time for a quiet countdown and cocktail?

      A good thing about concerts, is that everybody is generally there to listen and be silently part of something, and it doesn’t really matter how many people you know, and it’s a good thing to do solo.

      Or – maybe make a January 1st tradition? Invite people for a New Year’s Brunch or mocktails, do a hike, gallery tour or whatever you’d think would be a nice tradtion to have on January 1st. If you have something planned for the first new day, you might feel less sad about a slow NYE.

    19. Here’s what I do (newly 40, friends who don’t do NYE/are with their families/travelling, also hate being out:

      – Have something relaxing planned for the daytime (love the spa idea – I have a facial and massage booked on NYE this year)
      – Make someting truly delicious, even if easy, for dinner to look foward to. This year I’m doing mussels in white wine and butter with really good crusty bread
      – Have dessert planned – either made (i’ve done this) or purchased. This year I’m going the purchased route and am going to order from my favorite local bakery.
      – Have soft and pretty lighting, and a playlist I love and spend the evening doing relaxing tasks. If that’s yoga – great! I’ve done yoga, movies, a comfort show, or reading/crocheting
      – I specifically do not watch NYE programming becuase it just makes me feel a wee bit sad

      Whatever you do, I’ve found that the trick (for me) is to make the night of any holiday/gathering occasion feel intentional and special. I like my own company (and it sounds like you do, too!) so I think about it as celebrating the end and beginning of years with myself without having to consider what someone else wants to do. Almost like I’m throwing a little party for myself to celebrate that I had a good year/survived (depending on the year).

    20. We do a staycation with our kids, but it would also be lovely to do solo. The hotel we go to has an amazing spa and also an upscale bar.

    21. Stay at a hotel that does a NYE party, and get a ticket to their party. It’s a staycation but you ah e the hotel as home base. Don’t know where you are but LA has a lot of them so assuming others do too. Enjoy op!

  7. My city has had a well-publicized rash of stranger violence over the past 3-4 months. It used to be teens beefing with each other shot each other up late at night or people in the drug trade took out someone also in their line of work (competitor, someone who stole, someone who didn’t pay debts). This is stabbing a stranger on a commuter train, stabbing another stranger on train, sets of beefing teens at a suburban xmas tree lighting at 7pm shooting at each other (and hitting each other AND several bystanders in the crowd — this was particularly terrifying as many families with elders and young children were separated, shoved into restaurants who rushed everyone into the back, etc. An adult nephew was there with his mother, as he has done 25ish years before this. Someone was shot to death at lunchtime on the street my office overlooks (and I ate early that day but was on a call to hear it and it was so loud). Safe times and places don’t feel so secure.

    When I go hiking, I have a well-stocked first aid kid (since you are the first responder out there until real help arrives). At all of these events, bystanders were pressed into work either because it still takes 911 several minutes to arrive or at the xmas tree event, there are too many things happening all at once and it’s chaotic but some people are gravely wounded.

    I’m thinking that a stop-the-bleed type subset of my first aid kit for the woods now deserves just to tag along in my daily life. I never thought that before.

    2. I’m sorry OP, that sounds unsettling! I would also recommend CPR training including learning how to use a defibrillator. Utilizing a defibrillator significantly increases survival rates for people with cardiac episodes. And they are so easy to use!

      1. OP here and I’ve done that (4x?). People did CPR on the first stabbing victim though, which was helpful and actually wrong.

        2. yeah, I just figured that (maybe) a cardiac episode would statistically be more likely than a shooting. And AEDs are so intimidating but so user friendly!

      2. There are first aid classes specifically for shootings/stabbings (ie. not CPR) – “Stop the Bleed” is a major one, and worth going to if more preparation/education is something you’d like. Recommendations for when to use quikclot do have some differences in urban settings vs. backcountry, ie if the time to get to an ER is maybe 20 minutes, not several hours.

    3. Live your life. The tampon and/or maxipad you likely already have is sufficient to hold against a wound until help arrives. You’re much more likely to use this tidbit of advice in the event of a car crash, yours or someone else’s, than an act of shooting/stabbing violence.

      1. Actually, the first aid trainers say that isn’t true and much prefer quick clot or a TQ or pressure dressing. I was so hopeful. And the rayon in the tampon can get into a would in ways you don’t want.

    4. I suppose you could throw a first aid kit in your car, but you really have no control over these situations or their outcomes.

      1. I thought the whole idea of training people in first aid was that sometimes we can change outcomes if we know what to do (and importantly what not to do).

    5. You might be interested in your local community emergency response team (CERT). There are a number of trainings you can access that way.

    7. So, I used to work at a tech company on the edge of the Tenderloin. We had a drug dealer posted outside our office, we had shootings on our street several times in a month (including multiple murders). My office was a Class B former loft building, and as the GC, I had the honor of sending -companyall slacks that advised people to move away from windows and stay low (I am not exaggerating).

      I know this sounds like an unrealistic solution, but my solution was to be outside less. Be on the streets where this is happening as little as possible. It was safer to be inside (mostly). I stopped going out for lunch unless I was with a bunch of our former athlete burly SDRs (I am a former athlete burly girl!). I stopped taking the Muni home at night or walking–I would jump straight into an Uber. Your safety is worth it. And…I changed jobs. Not having to see people shooting up, defecating in the streets, brawling (we were on the border of two gang territories who were beefing) made my life a lot more pleasant.

      Random violence will always exist, but if there’s pockets where it’s worse, avoid. My parents always said, “Bad things happen to good people in bad neighborhoods.” It’s true. Stay out of the bad neighborhoods to the extent you can.

  8. Could someone please teach my dog to tell time? It is 3:30 and dinnertime is not for another 2.5 hours, but oh, the piteous whimpering of starvation!

    1. Is this a regular or new behavior? My dog always (understandably!) had trouble adjusting to meal times after DST changes, but random whining and whimpering at unusual times usually indicated he needed to go outside. Or that he was out of water, or he needed my opposable thumbs for something (retrieve a stuck toy, open his crate door, provide scritches, whatever).

    2. Automatic feeder for the win! The animal will come to see the feeder as the food source, not you.

    3. I am convinced my deceased dog could read digital clocks, as he was always on time, even the day after a time change.
      My current dog is also pretty accurate. I was 35 minutes late last night and he was literally grabbing a can from beneath the cupboard. I intervened before I determined whether he meant to bring it to me or try to open it himself.

    1. Fellow knitter, and I hate sweater stones, but I use my battery-operated sweater shaver at least weekly. I think the pumice doesn’t work very well, and it’s messy.

      1. This is me. It really just shreds things. I can’t get just the pills and everything connects to everything else.

    2. LOL, another knitter and there is clearly no consensus among us!

      I swear by handpicking the pills. I’ve not personally found a stone to be very effective and shaving seems to just encourage the pills to come back faster.

      1. I have this comb, the sweater stone, and an electric shaver. None of them work well for me. If I send my sweaters to the dry cleaner, they come back in mint condition. I have no what I’m doing wrong.

  10. A small holiday rant, and I will fully acknowledge that I’m at BEC stage with two of my DH’s aunts.

    DH has a large extended family. Among the cousins, he is the oldest by a lot. (11 years older than the next-oldest cousin. So, we’re mid-40s, and the cousins are now late 20s through mid-30s) Many years ago, when we were the only married couple, we started alternating holidays with our families. If my family got Christmas Day one year, his family got Christmas Day the next year, etc. It was the fairest way to divide things up without driving hours each holiday. We did that for the first few years we were married, and it was miserable and not much of a holiday. His aunts have grumbled about the alternating holidays behind our backs and sometimes to our faces, too, especially once we had kids because faaaamily celebrates on the day! Which I always found super unreasonable because I, too, have a family I want to celebrate with! And they happened to marry into families that let them call the shots, I guess.

    Well, now DH’s cousins all have little kids (newborns through age 8) have started pushing back a little bit on the day-of celebrations. Funny how that works. So now, one of the aunts is suggesting that we change family Christmas to the 26th, beginning next year, and save Christmas Day for the individual families. Which is reasonable, but DH and I are so freaking annoyed that his family was completely unwilling to bend UNTIL his aunts’ kids started having kids.

    These same people would get irritated with us when we’d put our little kids down for naps during holidays and family gatherings. Now that it’s THEIR grandchildren, of course it’s fine when the babies, toddlers, and preschoolers need naps! But when we did it, we were the helicopter parents (huge eyeroll).

    It is just always like this with his family, and is a big reason why neither of us likes spending much time with them. Whatever we’re doing, and whatever choices we’re making, are always deemed wrong, until DH’s much-younger cousins start doing it more than a decade later. They’re lucky we show up at all. DH’s mom refuses to see the hypocrisy, which further irritates both of us.

    So I guess we’ll miss Christmas per the usual this year, but next year and forevermore, the 26th is the day! It’s a reasonable solution but the fact that we were deemed “the problem” for years is really irritating us. I don’t even know why we have to keep going to this event.

      1. Because that is ultimately my DH’s call, as it will set off a cascade of family drama.

        1. If this event makes you and DH unhappy, consider skipping it. Or you + maybe kids skipping it. It’s ok if other adults throw a tantrum. Your kids deserve to have a fun holiday with their parents.

          These aunts have their own grandkids now, so they’re more likely to enjoy grumbling about your absence than truly miss you. Consider giving something to tut tut about your gift to them.

          1. The kids would 100% rather hang out with extended family than nuclear family only. That’s where the memories come from.

    2. You don’t have to keep going to this event! At a certain point it’s no longer feasible for adult cousins to get together every Christmas. Everyone has their own in-laws, their own calendars, and their own priorities. Maybe you go every other year, maybe you cherry pick when it works for you personally.

      But these aunts are no longer the decision making generation. They got away with the Christmas Day event for a while because you were the only parents, but now they’re outnumbered and accept it won’t work. Say no to the 26th and ignore their guilt trip. If they want to get the whole family together they can pick a less hectic time of year. It’s annoying but they’ll probably back off in a few years when DH’s cousins inevitably complain.

      1. The aunts not wanting to cede anything is a large part of the problem. Lots of dynamics at play, but they are very accustomed to controlling everything.

    3. I’m not sure if you’re local to your in-laws but if you are could you send your husband and kids on the 26th without you because “you came down with something?”

      And it’s super annoying to have the oldest of the next generation and to hear the peanut gallery’s commentary until things start affecting them. Super annoying.

    4. Those aunts sound like pieces of work. In my husband’s family, the person that calls all of the shots and makes everyone miserable is my MIL. On my side of the family, it was my aunt and my mom (her SIL) who battled for the title of “most drama.” December 25 is just a day, Jesus was probably born in the spring.

    5. I see members of my extended family once every 5 years or so, and only if they are visiting my grandma at the same time I do. I don’t really care if I never see the biddy-aunts or the generation-removed cousins who aren’t interested in any kind of relationship given our age and geography differences. It’s very freeing to just not care what they think and not cater to them any longer.

    6. I would start hosting at home for your family and invite extended members to join you.

      At some point the host flips to the younger generation. It sounds like it’s about that time for your husband and yourself. Hosting isn’t as hard as people make out. It’s easily outsourced with hiring cleaners, a decorator for the tree (I do this myself but my sister hates it so outsourced it) and choosing prepared foods over baking everything yourself.

      1. LOL, we host my family all the time. I know how to do that. The aunts get upset when anyone else in THEIR generation wants to host, let alone the next generation.

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