My stepdaughter's mother's house is very different from a normal household. She's very much a bare minimum kind of person. The only truly important things are work/school, and appointments. As long as you're on time for those and doing well, have good hygiene, and are keeping your bills paid, everything else is pretty much optional and usually not worthwhile to do. Their house is 3 bedrooms, but it's small, and unless they happen to have a guest, it's just her and her mother. My stepdaughter mother has a maid service come in once a month to do a clean because she's "too busy" with a standard 9-5 job. Her standards are basically just pick up after yourself, laundry once a week, do the dishes as they come in, and sweep/vacuum if you "think it needs it". In an actual family, these standards would lead to the house being an absolute dump, but because her house is all of 2 people, the house is perfectly fine.

Our family has 11 people when my stepdaughter is here, my husband and I, our other 4 kids, my sister and her son, and my parents, so we run our household very differently. We have things like routines, and chore lists. Aside from the past year, we have kids in sports. I'm sorry that we don't have a private bathroom for each person in the house and that we have actual tasks that need to be done in the house every single day and can't just get done never tomorrow.

She has never adjusted well in transitions and thinks we're strict for having actual standards. I'm sorry, but things just are not the same when it's 2 people versus a family of 10-11. It's not "just do whatever" like it can be with 2 people. After years of arguments, I finally snapped and told her that I'm sorry she has to spend so much time with an actual family, and now everyone is mad at me for not going along with the idea that a single woman with one part-time child is just as much a family as a large multgenerational family.

I'm sorry, but it's just not, and I'm tired for being the bad guy about it.