I have my neice aged 23 and my sister staying with me at the moment, they arrived Monday and are leaving tomorrow Saturday. For me it's enough, I love them both dearly but get worn down constantly trying to find ways to help them fill their day. (I won't even get started on the expense) I am not on holiday/retired, I am working full time but I find the disruption to my routine more difficult to handle than I did a few years back. Thankfully the weather has been glorious so beach and swimming are good options but I miss my privacy.
Does it bother you?

I think many feel the same way. Nice to see them but nice to see the back of them too.

There's a famous Mark Twain quote "Guests are like fish - they stink after three days"

I've had my youngest grandson staying with me, along with his dad, but they went back yesterday. I love them to bits.

This morning, we got our house back. I found madam sitting in the bedroom in her knickers putting her make-up on. I had forgotten that we were alone again and was wearing tight, respectable shorts.

I took them off and went for a swim in the pool.

We're watching the opening ceremony now, and she's just called out to me, '****ing hell, come and watch this.'

I've not used a swear word for 12 days, and it's unnatural.

Two days is about as much as I can stand these days, after that guests start to irritate me and I begin to resent them disrupting our life.

Of course there are the ones you would love to see the back of after the first day....
I'm sure you all know them, they think they are in a five star hotel and want waiting on hand and foot, what's really annoying about that sort is they won't lift a finger to help while there, expect to be chauffeured about every day and when they leave it's without even a thank you... never mind a bunch of flowers for your trouble and expense!

Never new we had so many friends and relatives until we bought our house in spain.

Our turning point came in 2008, when 22 of them turned up. We rented three villas for them, as well as ours, and lost three good friends (the villas owners).

We now limit visitors to two adults at any one time and make excuses all the time to keep many away.

And we don't pick them up from the airport and my car is permanently broken down so I can't drive them around.

We had loads of people during the first few years but gradually cut it out to just close family. Even good friends can turn into users and abusers. And the times I have heard said "may as well come for a fortnight not worth coming for a week" Yeah, it would be when it's free

Had one couple stay and didn't get in touch for another nine months, I said how are you and he said fine, we could do with a holiday! Another rang in January and said could they come in July as they wanted to book flight whilst cheap. Thing is I hate staying with people, unless we can have our own wing of the house If we went to the UK for weddings etc. we used to book a hotel.

I could write a book about their antics.

Yes, the other side to the coin is that I don't like taking advantage of other people's hospitality for long. It can be a bit difficult to explore things for yourself if the host is recommending places - don't get me wrong they are often spot on as they know the area, but I like to visit lesser visited places on holiday.
It's also hard to volunteer to help with cooking or cleaning etc. When we have guests I prefer to organise all the cleaning up myself, otherwise things will "disappear" (well not really, but they are put in cupboards or drawers that are impossible to guess at).

I've got very good friends (whom I also wind up) coming in August, I have booked us into Hotels in various parts of Spain we want to visit, so only leaves a few days at home. I love staying in good Hotels so it also makes me more excited to see them.

Me neither, I much prefer to stay in a local hote/BB and quite happy to meet up during the day. I often feel uncomfortable in other peoples houses.

I'd certainly prefer to stay in a hotel as well, but if I had such miserable bloody relatives as those writing here, I wouldn't give them the pleasure. They must surely have some horrible relations, guess it's a case of "you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your relations".

What the whole hotel ..

I thought you had written more than one book Ms Collins

Huh! For once I thought we were having a reasonable discussion about experiences....perhaps it's impossible on this forum!

"de cuerda" are they?