"What's The Most Bizarre 'House Rule' You've Encountered At Someone Else's Home?" (40 Answers)

Playing beer pong at this one couple's house and the rule was if the ball hit the floor and their cat got to it first everyone had to finish their drinks. Cat was wicked fast too.

Kitchen hours.

I stayed at a friend’s house when I was younger. Nobody told me the entire family has breakfast at 7am, so I slept in (nobody woke me up either btw).

I wake up around 9am and see my friend is gone. I wander into the kitchen and see them all sitting around the table laughing and eating a huge breakfast - pancakes, eggs, bacon, toast, orange juice, fruit, etc.

My friend’s mom looks at me and goes, “Hey, look who’s finally awake! The kitchen is closed, but there’s cereal in the pantry if you want to serve yourself!”

So I poured myself a bowl of cereal and went to sit down at the table, and the second I sat down they all stood up and left the kitchen - even my friend.

To this day I don’t understand why they did that to me.

In 1972 we were amazed when a colleague announced that no one would be allowed to smoke in his house.

Went over to a classmates house and the children weren’t allowed on the furniture. She was not even allowed to sit on her own bed. All children sat on the floor. My poor classmate was hardly allowed to touch anything in her own room without “permission”. It was bizarre and uncomfortable. Never went back.

When I was a kid my friend’s dad made his kids line up on the couch and just sit there silently while he watched TV and drank a beer. If you were visiting you had to do it too. When my mom heard about it, I wasn’t allowed to go over there when he was home. My mom knew an abusive weirdo’s behavior when she saw it.

The most bizarre house rule that I’ve encountered was at my friend's place, where they had a strict policy of 'no talking' during dinner, not because of any traditional reason, but because their elderly grandmother believed that a mischievous spirit living in the dining room would learn secrets and cause chaos.

If we slammed the door as kids, my dad made us kiss the door to make it feel better.

Went to a friends house for a sleepover when I was about 7. The rule was: no talking at the dinner table. The dad was in the other room watching TV while myself, friend, his sister and mother were supposed to just eat in silence and the whole vibe was like “don’t anger daddy.”

Suuuuper f****d up and sad to think people live like that.

I went to see a college friend over the summer & stayed the night. Her parents weren't home when I got there, and we went into the living room to talk. There were four recliners, no couch or other chairs. She sat in one recliner & I sat in another. She asked, "What are you doing?" and informed me I was sitting in her dad's chair. The remaining chairs belonged to her mom & brother. Where was I supposed to sit? On the floor.

I cannot sit on the couch at my dad’s house if his wife is home because she will feel “invaded.” She has to have the whole couch to herself. So I get to sit in a dining room table chair.

That if I’m on my menstrual cycle I am forbidden to have tampons or cups. So I was at a friends house and I left my tampon wrapped in a small plastic bag in their trash. Their dad whipped it out and yelled at me for using tampons. (While holding the bloody tampon)

Guests eat last. My aunt's ex husband used to make me sit and watch everyone eat before I could be served food.

When I was around 8, I went to a friend's house for a play-date/dinner after school.

When I asked for a drink, her Mum gave me a baby bottle with squash in it. I laughed, but she didn't laugh back. My friend took her own bottle and started drinking.
I asked the Mum if I could please have a cup instead, but she told me nope, and that children drink from bottles in their house.

Never went there again...

A friend of mine has a rule that nobody is allowed to use his frying pan (his wife and kids included).
Edited to add: For those getting outraged, this was not known or pointed out before I was already cooking scrambled eggs using said pan with a plastic spatula. I have 3 different sizes of the same pan and know how to use a non stick pan without damaging it - calm down.
I was staying there for a few days after a surgery and used his frying pan without knowing and when his wife spotted it she quickly warned me nobody is allowed to use that, it's his special frying pan and he doesn't let anyone use it.
I laughed and said "I don't play that childish s**t" when he came in and got all upset about it.
By that time it was too late as I'd finished cooking and was cleaning it.
He then hid his frying pan from everyone.
Because I had the time and have a bit of a malicious streak, and it was only a $40 pan I decided to prank him and I went and bought the same pan from a local store the next day while he was at work. I took photos of myself using it to cook, pretending to clean it with a steel wool pot scrubber, and drilling holes in it with his cordless drill, printed the photos at a local stationary shop and put them in about 20 photo frames around his house, and stuck one to the fridge.
His wife and kids thought it was hilarious, and still have one on their fridge a year later, and anytime we go away together I take one and put in on the fridge of the Airbnb/hotel just to remind him that he's a manchild and it's just a frying pan.

I had a friend when I was a kid and sometimes I would go to he's house. The kids couldn't eat at the table at the same time as the adults, we had to wait for them to finish and leave the table, and we couldn't talk at all at the table.

Always found it to be weird, always felt a creepy vibe in that family, even thou I was a kid.

Edit: oh, and they pour sugar in coke! Yes, they drank coke with even more sugar.

Not only did the cats get to walk on the table DURING meals, but you were supposed to let them eat off your plate because otherwise you were "interfering with the will of a sentient being."

I love my own cats- honestly I love practically all animals - but they don't get to eat off my plate or stroll around on the table and even if I *was* ok with that I certainly wouldn't expect a guest to share their plate with one of them.

In high school I had a friend whose dad was in the military. Not only did he make us do house chores (dusting, vacuuming, dishes) when visiting/sleeping over but he also woke us up at 6am by banging pots and pans to make us run around the neighborhood. he called it “morning boot camp” needless to say I only slept over there a few times.. I felt so bad for her.

if the lights were on you got yelled at for them being on and wasting energy, if the lights were off you got yelled at for being in the dark

I once went to a party at the home of a colleague of my now ex-husband, where we had a very nice and collegial potluck dinner with another couple. So, there were six adults and two children of the hosts, age maybe 8 and 10(?). After we ate and moved to the living area, the two hosts declared a period of silence to “concentrate on digestion.”

It wasn’t like a moment of silence, either, but like ten minutes or so. We and the other guest couple were looking at each other like, “wtf”. It was awkward AF, not knowing when it would be over and ok to resume normal conversation. I felt like a little kid put in timeout and hated it. We cut the visit short and never accepted another invitation from them.

I just thought of one! Although, it was not something I encountered.

At the time, I lived in a city where it was well over 105F for over 14 days. During an informal office get-together, a few of us women commented how the 1st thing to "come off" at home was our bras.

As teenagers and young adults, she and her sisters HAD to wear a bra while sleeping. Her Mom or Grandma would occasionally do a bed check. If they were braless, they would be beaten. As an adult, she still could not break the habit of wearing one. Her own girls were warned to always wear one while visiting Grandma and Gt Grandma.