How to tell my mom that her home is to gross for my son to visit?

September 5th, 2011 by

How to tell my mom that her home is to gross for my son to visit? (For those who hate to read a lot, the short version is at the bottom)I’m having a terrible time thinking of what to do in this predicament! I love my mother very much, and she adores that she’s a grama now. Her biggest joy is to care for my son whenever she comes to visit me. We live 8 hours away from each other, so keep that in mind as I type all this.My problem is that her house is just to gross for me to handle. My second baby is due in June, and my mother wants to take my son for a month to help me out. But I honestly don’t trust her or my step father to make sure he’s not ingesting things or around things he shouldn’t be! Her home has always been gross, but I never fully understood until I moved away and learned that a house can actually look and smell clean 24/7. She has 6 cats, and a great dane. They used to have another large dog who used the main living room carpet as a pee pad for around 5 years. Now, the biggest issue is that the house is covered in dust, fur, and smells EXACTLY like a dirty litter box. The entire house, besides two bedrooms and the basement, is all carpet. It’s a big house, so I can understand it’s all hard to manage. My step father helps her very little and only picks up the occasional puke mess if no one else is home. Notice I said pick up, not clean. To top it all off, 3 of the cats spray on certain furniture constantly and you can guarantee they will pee on any bed left unguarded (they are all fixed), and one of the three will no longer poop in the litter box since she’s nearing the end of her days. Also, from all the peeing that’s been going on for the past few years, there is actually MOLD growing on various places of her carpet. Black looking mold.Last month, I stayed up there for a week and a half to house sit for them while they went on vacation. My 8 month old son learned how to crawl while I was there, and began getting into everything! I was also 6 months along with baby #2 and in the full swing of my nesting phase. I thought I could handle it, but I was completely wrong!I cleaned for an entire day by myself when I arrived, and it only helped a tiny bit. I dragged all the movable carpets outside, vacuumed the whole upper level 3 times, put baking soda on everything twice, had to carefully vacuum the couch and love seat which where literally covered in fur, and scrubbed all the wooden furniture. Within 24 hours it was all for nothing! The cats peed on all the wooden furniture through the night, they peed on all my sons bottles and baby food containers on the counter, they peed on some of his toys my mother left on the floor, the fur was back, and the cat had had a liquidy poop by the front door. All my mother could do was sigh and pick my son up to leave again as I cleaned AGAIN! The part that pissed me off the most, was that my step father refused to let me lock the cats up downstairs (access to all their food, water, and litter box needs) to make it easier on me while I was there! Of course, as soon as they left, I started doing this and only let the cats out when I could supervise them. I had to clean daily, but the air in the house actually made my lungs sore even with all the windows freely open all day long.SHORT VERSION: How do I explain to my wonderful mother that she needs to change so much before I will allow my son up there without me around again. I don’t trust her or my step father enough to keep it sanitary. I simply don’t know how to verbalize to her that her house I actually think is a health risk from the mold and cat urine.