Woman gets back at neighbor who kept borrowing household items with a clever trick

It's always good to help out your neighbors because even more than lending a helping hand, it helps create strong communities. Everything from a simple act of collecting mail to letting them borrow something when times are tough allows our surroundings to be more pleasant. However, sometimes people can take advantage of a person's nice behavior. And in such situations, it can be challenging to find a solution without disrupting the community. u/Ok-Appearance-866 shared a story of their sister's neighbor taking things too far by borrowing stuff to the point where she had to do something. At the start, readers get to know that the neighbors would send their little girl over to "ask if they could borrow all kinds of stuff." These included things like band-aids and soap, which would be okay once in a while, but not every day.

The situation escalated when the little girl came to the house one day requesting to "borrow" a roll of toilet paper because they didn't have any. The author's sister did not ponder the request too much and gave it to her. However, the girl appeared again at their doorstep with the same request the next day. This time she reasoned that her parents had not gone out to the store to get it yet. The same pattern continued for a few more days until the author's sister decided it was time to do something about it, or it would only continue. She placed the toilet paper in the freezer, which essentially made it absorb moisture and would begin falling apart as soon as it came out.

They write, "The next day, sure enough, the little girl came back and asked to borrow another roll of toilet paper." The sister happily gave them the roll she placed in the freezer, after which they never came back with the same request again. Her ingenuity helped her to avoid saying no to the little girl while subtly being able to put a stop to the incessant borrowing habits of their neighbors.

Other individuals on the platform could relate to the incident and they shared their own stories of neighbors who lacked basic manners. u/Pleasant-Excuse-2530 commented, "Had a neighbor like this. My dad brought home a roll of one-ply from the hospital and gave it to them. They never asked us again." Another user, u/anObeseGeek, shared, "Had a neighbor who did something similar, was annoyed, went over and ask them what was wrong. Apparently, both parents got laid off and neither could get a job for two months. I brought them shopping, got the essentials - gave the money discreetly to the daddy so it would look like daddy paid; kids were happy, that mattered to me - the wife later even baked me a cake. Tough being parents with kids and no money." 

u/Own-Blackberry2647 also had a very similar story to share, saying, "I had neighbors like this once. They were lazy moochers. One day they asked to borrow some butter from me. I had a package of the cheapest off-brand margarine at the ready. I gave them a stick of margarine that had been opened and 'looked' like it had been used. They never borrowed from me again."