I’d probably pull my blinds. Yes, they are nuts and unreasonable but it is causing YOU stress.
And, really twice in two years isn’t the worst thing …hell, I can talk to you about the bipolar neighbor I shared a wall with that sang showtunes/Disney at the top of his lungs all night as he took down sheetrock on his side.
TempeMom – It’s really not causing me too much stress – you’re right, 3 or 4 times in 2+ years is not much to complain about. There are much much worse neighbors, I know. This is not ruining my life, and I don’t mean to sound like it is. I was really curious what a wide audience of people thought about this. Chances are, my neighbor has considerably more stresses than I do.
The shades are the paper ones that are translucent. They won’t block out the light. I can lower them, but honestly, I don’t think they are the solution. I absolutely will not buy blackout shades for my kitchen windows.
My husband sort of did the nottelling approach (post #35) when she came to us at midnight. Obviously that didn’t help.
I’ve stayed in hotels with blackout drapes. I’ve overslept and woken up at 9 am (which is not like me), to a pitch black room – even though the sun was shining on the other side, right through the window. Those things really work. I’ll bet this has been an issue for years – why these haven’t been purchased is beyond me.
Maybe the neighbors had a bad experience at a Motel 6 in the past and they don’t want you ‘leaving the light on for them’ because it brings back bad memories? Or probably the neighbor and her mom are turning tricks at their house and they tell their johns to look for the house with the kitchen light on…they don’t want their customers getting lost.
We close the blinds and curtains after dark at our house because we like the privacy. Not bothering the neighbors would be an additional benefit in this situation.
I wouldn’t engage, but I would document the heck out of the situation, perhaps even photographing your house from the outside at night, just in case.
“I absolutely will not buy blackout shades for my kitchen windows”
then they don’t have to either. Mom won’t compromise, neither will you.
"why these haven’t been purchased is beyond me. "
Maybe it is beyond them that you haven’t purchased them, just to be neighborly.
Consider whether it is an annoyance or harassment. If it is the former, whatever, they have to deal with the light being on once in a while. If it is harassment, call the cops.
And next time anything like this happens, do what my friend does - put your cell phone on “record video” and take it with you in your pocket to record the audio of your dealings with them. Completely legal in my state, check on it for other states. But either way you have proof if they go off the rails.
FWIW, my aunt used to take in boarders. Some were with the WPP. Very scary stuff.
We had some people in our town who had a running feud involving lights bothering neighbor next door. This single mom had a crazy neighbor who shined a mounted spotlight from his house directly at the lady’s bedroom window every night. She called cops about it and they didn’t do anything. One night the lady took jugs of Roundup herbicide and wrote into his prized manicured front lawn some profane words telling him to do something that wasn’t nice. He called cops on her and she ended up paying to fix his yard. She eventually sold her house and moved away from the perv neighbor.
Holy cow.
Weird, we have neighbors who installed a parking area light, quite tall, quite bright, it shone right into our bedroom and light is the one thing that really affects my quality of sleep. I bought a mask. And cheered when they sold the house and the new people changed that bright light set up!
Jeez! I think I should go bake some cookies for my relatively sane neighbors.
I’d normally say too bad so sad for them, but maybe a blind in your window could fix the issue.
I’ve had a few weird neighbors. For the most part I just ignore it and it goes away.
Well…at the rate they are going, it could be another year before they complain to the OP again. I mean really, isn’t it two complaints in two years or something like that?
I would just let it go.
What would bother me more is them coming onto your property to leave notes. I find that creepy.
I have no curtains that can be drawn on any of the windows on the first floor of my house, or in our bedroom (which faxes the woods). I don’t think it’s any of my neighbors business whether I buy black out blinds…or not. If light is bothering them, they should get the blinds.
I will say, we have two kids who would practice their instruments. In the winter…no problem, but in the summer, with windows open, the neighbors did ask that practicing stop at a certain hour. That was fine. There was nothing the neighbors child do to make this better…WE had to deal,with it.
But in the OP’s situation, the neighbor is fully capable of solving this issue. Why should the OP have to get or use blinds? Why can’t the neighbor do so…they are the ones who don’t want to see the lights.
Four pages and not one single observation or question about whether the neighbor is 10 feet away from the light, or 100 yards!
I think someone may be a nutcase, but its important to keep in mind that for real nutcases, their annoyance is real to them. They can’t help it. Mental illness is just that.
The good news is that they are both women. Generally speaking, less dangerous than the same stuff coming from men. Its likely that the police have some insight that might be valuable to you. If you play your cards right, you’ll be able to discern it. A friendly, non-threatening inquiry to the police might elicit valuable information.
I’d follow the advice to keep notes on complaints from them, and I’d also stifle the impulse to stick it too them by gratuitously leaving your light on. You need to reflect on this from a mental illness viewpoint and not from a rational viewpoint. That is very important. I’ll repeat, its likely that they can’t help it. (It may also be likely that some other annoyance takes the place of this if you completely eradicate the offending light. )
Good luck.
I don’t understand those here who think it is incumbent upon the OP to put window treatments up on her window, whether it’s 10’ away or 100’ away. What is this world coming to if we can’t turn the lights on in our own homes in the middle of the night? This neighbor should be thankful no one in their home works a third shift and is coming/going during hours of the dark.
In our previous house, our bedroom was the closest one to our neighbors garage (which was detached) and they had a motion detector light installed above their garage door. It would go off many times during the night - and geez, I was thankful; I’m sure 99.5% of the time it was due to critters, but if there was anyone lurking in their driveway, I’d want that light to go off and scare someone away. But it was incumbent upon me to either put a pillow over my head or make sure I had my eye shades on… not my neighbor to turn off his outdoor light.
Lights going on and off during the course of an evening is a good deterrent to criminals.
Wow, so glad we’ve always had good relationships with all our neighbors. We all know each other by name, and often meet in one another’s yard for a chat if we happen to see each other outside. Our neighbors to the immediate right are a Navy couple who at one point received orders to Florida and had to rent their house out during the worst period of the real estate bubble collapse. We kept watch on the goings-on with their tenants, and alerted them if we suspected they might need to check up on their property.
They moved back a year ago, now with an adorable tow-headed two yr. old daughter, who hugs us when we come outside. They have a riding mower and often mow our back forty while they mow their own. We always thank them wholeheartedly and gift them with six-packs of their favorite craft beer. We also mow their lawn whenever they are out of town and take in their mail and Sunday papers. When he finally made Chief, we did a little dance of joy. He’d been telling us about how hard he’d been working to make Chief for the past two promotion cycles, and we knew he richly deserved it. We gave him a congratulatory card and more beer. They gave us baked goods and tomatoes from their garden. We gave their cutie-patootie a small gift when we heard she was turning three. We are so thankful for their lives.
We have just as good a relationship with our neighbors on the opposite side. They are very social, and are fabulous cooks. We’ve had them over to our house for supper, and a couple of times a year, they always have a cook out and invite us, the Navy couple I just talked about, and their other close friends who live across the street. Actually, there’s a neighborliness that occurs within an approximately 8 house radius on either side of our street. We watch out for each other, report any suspicious activity we see, lend each other tools, ladders, power equipment. It’s something we’ve been doing for almost twenty years, and I took it all for granted until a recent thread in which many CCers admitted that they’ve never so much as even talked to (or seen) their neighbors. 
I can’t imagine the stress of dealing with unreasonable neighbors. I tend to keep ridiculously late hours, staying up well into the night with lights blazing. We don’t have a curtain or blind over our kitchen sink either, which faces the woods. But I have often thought about putting one up, even though I spend little time in the kitchen during those hours. It’s the only window I leave uncovered after dark, because quite frankly, I have a bit of a paranoid fear of being “observed” by some unseen, and possibly malevolent presence out in the darkness. Uncovered lighted windows at night are like lighted fish bowls. They showcase the interior and whomever happens to be occupying or passing through rooms as if one were viewing a motion picture. Meanwhile, you can’t see much of anything outside from your vantage point of lighted rooms. For all you know, their could be a sex pervert, an ax murderer, a government spy—a space alien (LOL, just joking!) out there. Point is, I don’t want anyone to see me whom I can’t see back at night.
My neighbor has lights in some of his trees, one of which shines right onto my bed at night. It didn’t occur to me to tell him to get rid of it. I did put shades on those windows, but I would have done that anyway for privacy.
Wow, I feel your pain. I have a crazy neighbor with a raking compulsion. She is out there every single day except when there is snow on the ground. She is crazy about her yard. She’s in a 3 unit condo next door, and one of the other long time residents moved when crazy neighbor threw a trowel at her. I also heard the crazy neighbor did not get along with the previous owner of our house. She would constantly complain about the condition of the yard, etc. Then one night, the previous owner of our house, a sweet elementary school teacher, went next door in the middle of the night and pulled up all of the crazy neighbor’s bulbs! Apparently, this put an end to the constant complaints! She is also the self-appointed Historic District Busybody. (It is a historic district and she makes an appearance at every hearing when someone on the street wants to alter a fence or gutters.) We get along well mostly, though sometimes she gives me the silent treatment, and I know it is something we inadvertently did with our yard that she objects to. But eventually she starts talking again. If I bring up hostas or daylilies I am sure to get her talking again!
Our retired neighbor across street works in his yard all day keeping his place beautiful…he even trims bushes into giraffes and stuff just like Disney World. It is terrific going out my front day in morning and looking at the beautiful scenery he creates…I feel kinda bad that he has to look at our place when he goes out his front door in morning.
Life is short. While the OP is without question the innocent actor here and has no obligation to fix the source of her neighbor’s complaint, it is a lot cheaper and easier to put up curtains or blinds on the kitchen window(s) at issue that solve the problem than to pay a lawyer to start writing letters or getting court orders or getting the police involved- and it sounds like the problem then goes away for her and her admittedly psychologically troubled neighbor and the stressed out caregiver daughter who may rarely if ever get a break from caring for her mother.
There are several reasons why the neighbors may have decided against black out shades. Maybe they can’t afford them after buying cancer meds. Maybe the mom needs the window open for fresh air or to listen to the sounds of your city. Maybe she wakes up really early and likes to see the sun, but can’t get out of bed on her own to open the shade. Those may seem like little things, but it’s amazing what little things can help distract those who are chronically ill.
I don’t understand what the other neighbors’ opinions or the tenants’ behaviors have to do with the fact that the daughter of a “very elderly” neighbor struggling with cancer has repeatedly, politely asked you to help find a way to make her mother more comfortable. Comments like, “please don’t leave the lights on all night,” and “must you leave your lights on” hardly seem designed to antagonize you, so I wouldn’t go out of my way to make them miserable. I wouldn’t leave the light on all night on purpose to “bug” them; I’d get a curtain for my kitchen and consider it my contribution to peaceful city living.
Well, it is antagonizing if the neighbor is claiming this and it’s not happening. She’s being accused of lying.