About six months ago, a new neighbor moved in — a woman around 40 with her 16-year-old son. At first, she seemed fine. I even let her borrow some household items and allowed her to use my BBQ grill station when we weren’t around. No big deal, right?
One weekend, my husband, kids, and I went on a visit to my parents. When we came back, my backyard looked like a disaster zone. Empty bottles, food scraps everywhere, and the grill was a total mess, like a grease expl0si0n had just happened. I asked her about it, and she just shrugged it off, saying it was her son’s birthday and, well, kids will be kids. She acted like I shouldn’t even make a fuss about it. But hey, it’s MY backyard, not a community park!
So, I decided to handle it in a reasonable way. I made three simple rules:
- Clean up after using something and put it back.
- Clean up after your child.
- Be respectful. That’s it.
I gave the list to her, thinking we’d be all set.
THE NEXT DAY, I woke up to find a list of her “rules” taped to my door. Her rules. For MY property.
Spoiler: I didn’t follow her rules.
Two weeks later, her son came knocking on my door, asking, “Ma’am, please, stop!”
After her little note stunt, I was stunned. I mean, who does that? Her rules were things like:
- “Backyard must be available after 4pm on weekends.”
- “No loud music when I have company.”
- “Do not question my son about anything — talk to me directly.”
That last one? Yeah, that one ticked me off. Because I hadn’t questioned her son. I’d simply asked him once not to ride his bike through my flower beds. That’s it.
So, instead of arguing, I decided to make my space clearly unavailable
I got a padlock for the back gate.
Installed a small fence divider between our yards.
Bought a cover for the BBQ and locked it shut.
And then I got a motion sensor sprinkler. Yep — a sprinkler that activates when it senses movement. (Best $49.99 I ever spent, by the way.)
Suddenly, they weren’t wandering into my yard anymore. Problem solved?
Not quite.
The following weekend, I got home from grocery shopping to find someone had tried to cut through the lock on the BBQ. It wasn’t fully broken, but scratched up enough that I knew someone had tried.