Rude to tell family they can’t stay with you?

Oooh boy I have your back on this one. There are several nice hotels near me, and I always suggest them if it's more than 2 people.

I am not making a huge fancy meal with that many people wandering my house.

Are you close with everyone? If so then do they want the fun of all being together? Will they want to spend days all hanging together or will they want to be out and about doing their own thing. Will they just be sleeping in the hotel and hanging at your house through the days.

If you’re all close and the togetherness brings joy then perhaps it’s being a party pooper (not rude) to ask them to stay elsewhere. If you’re not that close then it’s no big deal. It would stress me to have everyone sleeping in common rooms too. We have one guest room and one guest bathroom. We had my sister’s family with us last year and we made it work. I moved one child onto my floor for 2 weeks. It was fine. Even though I complained to dh every day and was stressed with the mess I have good memories of the time all together.

So I guess you could go either way. I wouldn’t say it’s rude but it can be a fun killer to have some stay elsewhere. But depending on your relationship it might be the right move to have them stay elsewhere.

It is perfectly acceptable in my book.

Feel free to attach a list of links to local hotels when you email/text them about the holiday, or if you talk on the phone ask if they’d like you to send a list of good local hotels.

Nope, not rude at all. Say you are just not up for it this year, but they are all welcome to come for the meal and family time, just not stay. Look up some nearby motels and rates and give them a list. They can have lots of togetherness, just not between the hours of say, 11pm and 9am. Surely grown ass adults would rather sleep in a bed rather than on a couch or air mattress! Good luck!

Rude or not, I think is going to be very specific to family culture. Your dh knows best if they will take it as rude. 
I agree with you about having people sleeping on my living room floor is super stressful. It always means someone (or everyone) has to go to bed too early or too late and get up too early or too late because of beds in the common areas of the house.  

I would express how excited I am to see them but also acknowledge for sanity sake it is best to get hotel rooms. You can accommodate "mom" so she can spend extra time with her son. 

Or you get a hotel room so you can have a private bathroom and be able to turn off being the hostess on duty by leaving the house.

Are there any airbnbs in your neighborhood? Maybe they would respond better to a self-contained rental space in walking distance than to a motel. We host quite a few "visiting family in the neighborhood" guests in our airbnb. Sometimes it's the local family hosting who seek us out, sometimes the visiting family, but I often hear how it makes those family visits so much more enjoyable and less stressful.

While I understand in theory your DHs family enjoyment of everyone all crammed together and sharing a chaotic good time, I'm now middle aged, need my sleep, and do not enjoy chaos, so my vote goes with you. I think that those chaotic everyone underfoot events can be very happy in some people's memories, but they just aren't fun in reality, at least not for the ones tasked with getting food on the table, keeping the toilets from clogging, and maintaining some degree of cleanliness.

I don't think it's rude to ask that they find other lodging.  That said, if they push to stay at your place, YOU should go to a hotel and pamper the shit out of yourself!  

I don’t think it’s rude to suggest a hotel, but since it’s DH’s family and he wants them to stay I would suck it up and let them stay.

I so agree with this^^

If it was important to my DH that he have that 24/7 time with his family, and that's why he wanted them to stay, I'd make it work. It's his home too and I think it's okay for him to say that he really wants this time with his family for a few days. If he just wants to make it work to accommodate their cheapness and doesn't really care about the 24/7 togetherness, I think it's fine to suggest a few hotels.

I feel the same way you do, and the in-laws always used to stay with us. That’s anywhere from 4-15 people, the large majority of them children. Whereas I am super anal and like it dark and quiet, they are not at all like that so when they came my anxiety was through the roof, which snowballed into physical pain; add in no ability to decompress…not fun.

Know what works? An extremely cold house! We keep our house at 63, at 64 or 65 our sleep starts being affected. Of course we turn it up to 70 or 72 when they come, but that’s still too cold for them. Meanwhile we are sweating and just miserable. We provide tons of blankets, heated blankets, sweaters, cardigans and fuzzy socks for everyone, but that isn’t enough to keep them comfortable. I’ll be honest and admit that I do miss the togetherness; but I don’t miss the chaos, the mess (they just left their belongings everywhere), the noise, the way MIL takes over our house and questions why we do things the way we do, the kids allowed to climb all over everything, having to keep our pets corralled, etc. I love them, but we aren’t compatible as roommates.

Anyway, they don’t ask to stay anymore. I don’t think it is at all rude to not invite them, it just might go against family traditions. But it’s your home, and you don’t want to start dreading seeing them, ya know? I might feel differently if there were money issues with any of them. Not that it’s be rude even then, but I’d feel more inclined to just suck it up so the whole family could be together for the holiday.

I don't think this is about rudeness, it's about family dynamics as a previous poster mentioned. My parents were so offended the one time we got a hotel room. They have a small house and an extra 4 people is a lot, and I figured we'd just stay at a hotel - she HATED the idea. If they're very much into the 24 hour togetherness AND it's a rare occurrence, I'd probably suck it up. Finding a Air BnB/VRBO as the party house might be a better solution for all.

Oh HELL to the no. I have a big house because I need my space. Unless I’m specifically inviting a group of people to stay at my place for a specific reason, I’d be suggesting a local hotel, Air BnB, Motel 6 or whatever especially if it’s for multiple days.

OMG, we had some relatives with three young children around my kid’s age (she was about 7 at the time) come stay with us for a few days. I thought it would be fine because the two older kids could bunk with my DD in her room (she has a queen sized bed) and the little one could sleep on a toddler bed mattress on the floor in the guest room or with the parents in the queen bed there if they preferred that. They showed up when DD was at school and the dad had a work conference. By the time my kid got home from school, those kids had torn up our playroom and scattered everything my kid owned all over the room. 😳 They were loud, they were messy and they were rude which was a total shock because the parents themselves are lovely. By the end of day two I was so ready for them to go and WE INVITED THEM. Ugh. No. Just no. Plus six people sharing a bathroom just doesn’t work. From now on, no more than two people are staying here at a time.

Now at our lake cabin, that’s a whole different story. We have a guest room there that easily sleeps five. There is a separate bathroom on that level that they can use, a separate fridge if they want to bring some of their own food and there is a separate entrance to that level. Plus we don’t keep a lot of our personal stuff there for visitors to mess with.